Saudi Arabia’s car market in 2021 rises by 24.6% with 585,351 sales, reporting a very strong performance all year, except for a flat Q1. Chevrolet is the only brand in the leaderboard to report losses, falling 16.2%.
Market Trend
The Saudi Arabian car market this year recovered effectively from the pandemic crash of 2020 and reported a very promising performance all year, except for Q1, which has been flat.
After starting the year in a very positive tone (+27.4% in Q1), the market quickly collapsed as the virus struck. Aiming to slow down the spread of the COVID-19, on March 15th the Government imposed closure for shopping malls, restaurants, and public parks, with the exception of essential businesses, while on the 24th of March, a national curfew was introduced.
As a result, the car market in March was almost flat (-1.7%), while the sharpest drop in sales this year was in April when sales declined by 74.2%. In June the market revamped impressively (+103.9%) when a rush to purchase vehicles was created by the July 1st VAT introduction. In the second half of the year, the market remained heavily hampered by the pandemic, with every month reporting double-digit drops in sales.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic sales fell in 2020. In fact, 469,593 units have been sold, reporting a decline of 13.4% compared to 2019.
In 2021 the year started flat for the Saudi Arabian market, in fact, in Q1 140,561 units have been sold, reporting a 0.2% decrease in sales compared to Q1 2020, while in Q2 sales started growing again, reporting a 33% increase in sales with 151,111 units sold due to the low levels reported in Q2 2020.
In Q3 sales kept increasing quickly, gaining 69.6% with 150,708 units sold, and in Q4 sales gained 12.9% with 142,971 units.
Indeed, Full-Year sales for 2021 have been 585,351, reporting a 24.6% increase compared to 2020.
Brand-wise, this year the leader Toyota (+27%) gained 0.6% market share, followed by Hyundai (+16.5%), which lost 1.1% share. Nissan (+27.8%) remained in 3rd place, gaining 27.8%, while Mazda gained 7.4%, followed by Changan -up 3 spots- which gained 39.6% and reported the best performance.
Kia -down 1 spot- ended in 6th place and gained 6.3%, followed by Isuzu (+6.8%) and MG -up 1 spot- which gained 26.3% sales. Closing the leaderboard we have Ford -up 1 spot- gaining 35.3%, overtaking Chevrolet -down 4 spots- which lost 16.2% sales.
The most sold vehicle this year is the Toyota Camry (+34.9%) with 33,420 units sold, followed by the Hyundai Elantra (-7.3%) registering 24,898 new sales this year. The Toyota Yaris (+80.2%) closes the podium and reports 24,545 new units sold.
Tables with sales figures
In the tables below we report sales for top 10 brands and top 10 models.
