The National Association of Automobile Manufacturers of South Africa, Naamsa, said the overall November market grew 7.2% in spite of a difficult economic environment, led by a strong performance in the new car segment.
Naamsa said aggregate new vehicle sales for November at 49 754 units had increased by 3 357 units or 7.2% from the 46 397 vehicles sold in November last year.
“November 2017 export sales at 27 178 vehicles had registered a substantial decline of 4 315 units or a fall of 13.7% compared to the 31 493 vehicles exported in November last year.”
“Overall, out of the total reported Industry sales of 49 754 vehicles, an estimated 38 986 units or 78.4% represented dealer sales, an estimated 14.0% represented sales to the vehicle rental Industry, 4.6% to government and 3.0% to industry corporate fleets,” Naamsa said.
“The contribution by the car rental sector to sales was difficult to determine exactly since four companies presently did not report sales by channel. “
Naamsa said sales incentives on offer saw the new car market had showing upward momentum and at 32 821 units, recording a gain of 4 614 cars or an improvement of 16.4% compared to the 28 207 new cars sold in November last year.
“The car rental Industry had again made a major contribution accounting for about 19.8% of new car sales in November 2017 – meaning that one in every five new cars sold during the month represented a car rental sale,” Naamsa said.
Sales of new light commercial vehicles were down 7.4%,“ weighed down by poor investment sentiment and the prevailing difficult business environment,” but the industry association said there had been a month-on-month improvement over October sales.
Naamsa said industry export numbers were expected to be below expectations, with the decline in exports in November attributed to “the lagged effect of inclement weather which had affected Durban Port operations and production at the Durban Toyota SA Plant. “
“Additionally, the Volkswagen SA Plant was gearing up for the production of new Polo models to be launched early next year. The model run out of the previous Polo had contributed to lower export units,” Naamsa said.
It said that over the past six months, the domestic car market had performed relatively positively in a challenging economic environment with the contributing factors being the continuation of highly attractive sales incentives, sharply lower new vehicle price inflation, stable interest rates and the ongoing above average demand by car rental companies.
“Overall, a year on year improvement in aggregate domestic sales of around 2.0% for 2017 was anticipated. Going into 2018 new vehicle exports were expected to recover on the back of positive global economic growth prospects,” Naamsa said.
