South Africa Auto market in 2021 rises by 20.5% with 464,743 sales, reporting a strong performance except for Q1 (-0.7%). Haval enters the leaderboard and reports the best performance this year, gaining 146.4%.
Market Trend
The South African car market recovered effectively from the pandemic crash of 2020 and reported a very promising performance all year, except for just a 0.7% fall in Q1
The automotive industry represents one of the most relevant sectors for South Africa.
In the country, there are based several plants producing not only for the domestic market but for the entire South African region and for other places in the World. However, in the last years, the South African economy was struggling and all industrial sectors have been hit, including the automotive, and the demand for new vehicles has been slow for years.
The domestic light vehicles market achieved an all-time volume record in 2013 with near 615,000 units. After that peak, sales declined any year, and in 2019 sales landed at the lowest score out of the last nine, with few units more than half a million.
Because of the COVID-19 pandemic sales significantly decreased in 2020. In fact, sales have been 380,449, reporting a fall of 23.3% compared to 2019.
In 2021 the year started mostly flat for the South African market, in fact, in Q1 116,522 units have been sold, reporting a 0.7% decrease in sales compared to Q1 2020, while in Q2 sales started growing quickly, reporting a 103.8% increase in sales with 112,146 units due to the incredibly low volumes in Q2 2020.
In Q3 sales gained 16.4% sales with 117,504 units, and in Q4 sales increased 5.5% with 118,571 units.
Indeed, Full-Year sales for 2021 have been 464,743, reporting a 20.5% increase compared to 2020.
Brand-wise, this year the leader Toyota (+33.9%) gained 2.5% market share, followed by Volkswagen (+11.9%), which lost 1.2% share. Hyundai lost 0.5% share, gaining 12.9%. Ford fell in 4th place (-9.6%), followed by Nissan which gained 15.4%.
Suzuki -up 1 spot- grew effectively by rising 66.9%, followed by Renault which rose 1 spot and gained 33.6%, and Kia which gained 2 spots and gained 57.2% sales. Closing the leaderboard we have Isuzu -down 3 spots- up 1.6% this year and Haval which rose 3 spots and gained a huge 146.4%.
The most sold vehicle has been the Toyota Hilux (+23.9%) with 38,731 units sold holding 8.3% share.
Tables with sales figures
In the tables below we report sales for top 10 Brands.
