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In today's blog we take a look at South Africa's favourite car brands. We base this in the number of vehicles sold by dealerships throughout South Africa. We will also take a look at the most exported vehicles in South Africa. Since South Africa has a large vehicle manufacturing sector (think BMW plant in Rosslyn, Pretoria), and VW plant and GM plants in the Eastern Cape.
We will also take a look at which brand of cars government departments are buying. Are the buying BMW's for political fat cats? We take a detailed look at South Africa's vehicle sales and exports below |
Mirror, mirror on the wall which is the most popular car brand of them all?
The graphic below shows the number of vehicles sold per car brand in 2016, in descending order. Starting with total vehicle sales in South Africa for 2016, which amounted to 276 904 vehicles being sold in 2016.
The horizontal bar chart above clearly shows the battle at the very top is extremely close between Volkswagen (VW) and Toyota. Volkswagen sold 46 433 vehicles (16.8% of market share), with Toyota coming in in 2nd place with 42 746 vehicles (15.4% of market share) and Ford coming in a distant third place with 30 092 vehicles (10.9% of market share) sold. Together the top three car brands in SA sold 43.1% of all cars in South Africa. Showing just how skewed South Africa's car market is towards the top three sellers in the country.
Hyundai, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Renault, Mazda, Kia and Audi round up the rest of the top 10 vehicle brands (based on sales in South Africa. The top 10 selling car brands in South Africa sold 80.5% of the new vehicles in South Africa in 2016. Leaving 34 other brands that reported sales fighting for less than 20% market share.
Readers will notice super car builder, Ferrari also reports vehicle sales. And they sold 95 cars in South Africa in 2016. That is almost 8 Ferrari's a month in South Africa. Sister company Maserati sold 107 cars (an average of 9 cars) a month. While sports and super car manufacturer (and part of the VW stable) Porsche sold a whopping 1 409 cars in SA during 2016 (an average of 117 cars per month). Clearly there is no shortage of cash if South African can afford to buy so many high end vehicles.
Now the next question is, which cars do government buy? Cheap little run arounds for their respective government departs, or expensive luxury vehicles for the overpaid ministers and director generals? The chart below takes a look at the number of vehicles per car brand sold to government.
South Africa's government seem to like VW just as much as its citizens. With 51% of cars sold to government belonging to VW, 25% to Toyota and 6.8% to FORD. The same top 3 car brands we saw in sales to citizens. What is surprising is the low number of Mercedes-Benz's sold to government, compared to arch rival German manufacture BMW. We suspect Merc did not fully disclose sales figures to government. As there are far too many S-class Mercs driving around in blue light brigades to make the figure of 2 Merc's sold to government believable.
Next up we will take at vehicle exports. South Africa is well known for its vehicle building capacity and plants and builds cars for Mercedes-Benz, VW, BMW, Opel and the likes (and the majority of this takes place in the Eastern Cape).
The bar chart below shows the main car brands being manufactured in South Africa and then exported to the rest of the world.
Next up we will take at vehicle exports. South Africa is well known for its vehicle building capacity and plants and builds cars for Mercedes-Benz, VW, BMW, Opel and the likes (and the majority of this takes place in the Eastern Cape).
The bar chart below shows the main car brands being manufactured in South Africa and then exported to the rest of the world.
As can be seen from the bar chart above, the majority of vehicles exported out of South Africa are Mercedes-Benz. With Volkswagen and BMW coming in at a distant 2nd and 3rd place in terms of vehicle exported out of South Africa. Merc made up 465 of vehicles exported out of South Africa in 2016, with VW making up 28.9% and BMW 23.8% of exported vehicles.