Vehicle sales off to a good start

Latest figures show new car sales rose 12.3%, light commercials by 20.0%, medium commercials by 10.6%, heavy trucks by 30.0% and extra heavy trucks by 16.6%. Export sales for January totalled 17,399 vehicles which is an improvement of 5,794 vehicles or a gain of 49.9% compared to the 11,605 vehicles exported in January last year.

Out of the reported Industry sales (excluding Mercedes-Benz South Africa), 76.9% or 40,568 units represented dealer sales, 16.7% represented sales to the vehicle rental Industry, 3.2% to government and 3.2% to Industry corporate fleets.

New-car market maintains strength

The new-car market continued to demonstrate strength in January, 2013 and at 39,738 units, including Mercedes-Benz sales, reflected an improvement of 4,348 units or 12.3% compared to the 35,390 new cars sold in January last year.

Recent exchange rate weakness would have contributed to pre-emptive buying by consumers to avoid higher expected new vehicle prices.

Industry sources say the momentum of vehicle exports was expected to improve further over the balance of the year and particularly exports of light commercial vehicles should increase substantially during 2013.

They say the near term outlook for the automotive sector remained reasonably positive. Factors that would continue to support domestic sales included the low interest rate environment, replacement demand, the highly competitive trading environment with attractive incentives, low debt servicing costs, new model introductions and strong demand by car rental companies.