New car sales revving higher

Last year was a particularly poor year for new car sales in this country, but the fact that this year's sales figures for the first five months is more than 24% up on 2009 which seem to indicate that the industry is on the road to recovery.

Total new vehicle sales rose to 39 095 units in May of which 25 714 were passenger car sales. The Light Commercial Vehicle (LCV) sector shared the spoils, 32.6% ahead of May 2009 and 8.9% higher than last month. LCV sales totalled 11 501 units in May.

Watching the trend

"April is a notoriously bad sales month, so not too much should be read into May results against last month," says vice president marketing, sales and service, Ford Motor Company of Southern Africa, Jacques Brent.

He said indications were that May was under pressure from a retail perspective. "We will need to see if that trend continues into the next few months."

Ford Motor Company of Southern Africa (FMCSA) resolved some of its stock and production issues during May. Both the company's passenger cars and LCVs outstripped prevailing market conditions during the month, recording 14.3% and 20.5% growth respectively over April. Total FMCSA sales rose 17.5% over April levels.

"Our previous month's sales activities were challenged by stock and production issues, which means May sales are more recovery than outright growth for FMCSA," says Brent.

Fiesta took passenger car honours in terms of sales leadership for the company with 461 units sold, followed by 675 new registrations for Bantam.

Strike impacts on auto industry

"May was not without its challenges, not least the Transnet strike, and this has no doubt impacted the entire industry to some extent," says Brent. "These effects will continue to be felt during June as supply gets back to normal during the month and this could be further impacted somewhat by the soccer fever."

Top performing new passenger vehicles May 2010 (by model and volume)

New light commercial vehicles May 2010 (by model and volume)

Source: Naamsa