However, head of Standard Bank vehicle and asset finance (VAF) for personal markets Nicholas Nkosi explains: “Whilst the February passenger vehicles numbers show a slight improvement year on year, this is not necessarily a true reflection of the change in consumers buying more vehicles, as this is masked by the fact that the car rental industry contributed 9.9% of the overall passenger vehicle sales in February 2015.”
Car sale figures
There were 584 more new vehicle sales for February 2015, since last year. This put the total amount of sales up to 52 568. That is a 1.1% increase.
Of these vehicles, 84.7% (44 347 vehicles) were dealer sales, 7.1% were rental industry sales, 4.6% were sales to industry corporate fleets, and 3.6% were government sales.
Export sales also increased during this period, to 29 760, an increase of 35.6% (7 819 vehicles).
In a press release on Monday, NAAMSA said: “Domestic sales of industry new light commercial vehicles, bakkies and mini buses at 15 139 units during February, 2015 reflected a gain of 268 units or an improvement of 1.8% compared to the 14 871 light commercial vehicles sold during the corresponding month last year.”
However, while domestic sales have increased, vehicle sales in the medium and heavy truck segments have declined.
“Medium commercial vehicle sales at 768 units and heavy commercial vehicle sales at 1 553 units, reflected a decline of 151 units or 16.4% in the case of medium commercials and, in the case of heavy trucks and buses, a decline of 57 vehicles or a fall of 3.5%, compared to the corresponding month last year,” said NAAMSA.
According to Standard Bank VAF personal, new business improved by 14% compared to the same period last year.
New vehicles improved by 5.4% and used vehicles improved by 25.7% over this same period in 2014.
Furthermore, Standard Bank noted: “The Average Contract Term increased from 65.8 months in February 2014, to 67.8 months in February 2015 (3.0% year on year growth).
“The average deal size increased from R261 757 in February 2014 to R305 391 in February 2015, [a] 16.7% year on year increase.”
Most popular car brands
According to Cars.co.za, Toyota was the most popular car brand in January 2015, followed by Volkswagen.
| Brand | Total sales | Market penetration |
| Toyota | 11 191 | 21.4% |
| Volkswagen | 8 342 | 15.9% |
| Ford Motor Company | 5 672 | 10.8% |
| Nissan | 4 443 | 8.5% |
| GMSA | 4 367 | 8.3% |
Source: http://www.cars.co.za/motoring_news/new-vehicle-sales-south-africa-january-2015/29193/