South Africa Auto Sales moderately declined in 2023. Following the previous two years recovery, the marke lost 4.4% at 485.175. However, the market leader Toyota kept increasing the gap over all followers.
Market Trend and Outlook
In 2023 the South African vehicles market hit totals 485.175 sales, a 4.4% decrease from the previous year. The industry was not able to recover, hit by inflation rate and high cost of car loans.
Looking at brand-wise, Toyota was still the leader with 128.978 sales (+0.5%), followed by Volkswagen at 64.992 (+4.3%) and Suzuki with 51.726 registrations (+10.1%).
In 4th position ranks Hyundai with 34.948 sales (+11.4%) ahead of Nissan at 31.111 (+6.1%), Ford at 27.400 (+4.5%) and Renault with 27.185 (-0.2%).
The last 3 positions in the Top 10 remain unchanged with Kia still in 8th at 20.991 sales (-7.8%), followed by Isuzu at 18.726 (+4.3%) and Haval at 13.764 (-15.8%).
Medium-Term Market Trend
There have been many ups and downs in the South African vehicles market. If we look at the past decade the market first grew from 2010 to 2013 reaching an all-time high of 614,900 sales. In the following year the trend inverted and the market dropped for 3 years reaching a minimum in 2016 at 523,254. In 2017 the market grew 1.5% but in 2018 it started to fall again, with 2019 following suit and reaching 507,567 sales.
The arrival of the pandemic in 2020 caused the South African market to collapse 29.4% to 364.030 registrations by the end of the year.
Luckily the fall wasn’t due to a structural problem in the industry with 2021 growing 22.2% to 444.700 sales and the 2022 at 507.358.
Economic crisis, with high inflation rate and huge interest rates for loans, hit the market in 2023.
Tables with sales figures
In the tables below we report sales for top 10 Brands.
