What is the most popular car brand in South Africa?

South Africa is a nation with a steep motoring culture and heavy reliance on personal mobility, largely due to the limited public transport infrastructure. As such, the purchase of a vehicle for personal use is a very real part of South African lives. South Africa’s annual consumption of motor vehicles may not be as high as that found in other parts of the world but a strong local motoring manufacturing ecosystem still contributes a significant amount to the country’s GDP.

Related: What colour car is the most popular?

AutoTrader, as South Africa’s premium online buying and selling platform, sees a substantial amount of this traffic, allowing us to extract key data points and assess the overall landscape with a considerable degree of accuracy. The annual AutoTrader Car Industry Report looks at consumer behaviour and allows us to see which brands, models and variants are popular amongst the South African consumer.

 

Most popular brand in SA

Popularity can be determined by a variety of means. Through interaction with the AutoTrader products, we’re able to assess the popularity of certain brands, be it through searches or enquiries. According to the AutoTrader Car Industry Report which covers data captured from January 2022 to December 2022, the most searched-for brand in South Africa is Volkswagen.

 

There’s a slight shift when one looks at the figures for the most searched-for model though and here it’s the Toyota Hilux that gets the most action. The elastic search functionality of the AutoTrader site allows one to simply type in your search term and be presented with an accurate compilation of that variant. When we look at the variant level, it’s the Volkswagen Golf GTI that comes out on top.

Searches are one thing and enquiring about a vehicle is the first real step towards a sale. The figures for enquiries are naturally rather different to searches but this shows genuine buying intent.

It’s in enquiries that Toyota trumps all in both brand and model enquiries with Toyota being the most enquired about brand and the Hilux taking top honours for the most enquired about model.

 

Sales figures

Still, searches and enquiries are only a part of the picture, and sales figures reflect consumer habits. The point where one is prepared to make the financial commitment to a product speaks louder than mere searches. For this information we turn to the NAAMSA sales reports, in this case, a snapshot of the annual sales figures of new vehicles, looking at the first month of 2023.

A total of 42 509 new vehicles were sold in the month of January 2023, a reassuring increase of 4.8% over the same period in 2022. in the face of pressing logistical and supply issues, it’s welcoming to see an increase in the volumes as the world recovers from the pandemic of three years ago.

Here are the best-selling new vehicles in January 2023:

 

Passenger vehicles

Toyota - 7 595

Volkswagen - 4 864

Suzuki - 4 213

 

Light Commercial

Toyota - 4 674

Ford - 1 287

Isuzu - 1 273