By Otsile Kadiege

Despite the declining new vehicle sales market in South Africa, Toyota South Africa Motors maintains its sales momentum after recording 11,524 registrations for a sizeable 25,8% share of the new automotive market.

The most outstanding take-outs from Toyota’s February performance are in the passenger car arena. Thanks to 1,959 unit sales, the Corolla Cross earned the crown as SA’s most popular passenger car with supporting top-ten performances from Starlet (1,481) and Fortuner (722). Coming in at number 11 was the Urban Cruiser on 649 units. Vitz, Corolla Quest and Rumion contributed to the passenger pot with respectable retail numbers of 550, 361 and 333 respectively.

Within the more premium 4×4 passenger space and despite an all-new model waiting in the wings there was a good showing from Prado on 110 unit sales, 96 customers chose Land Cruiser 300s and Lexus NX pulled off 58 new registrations.

Moving to LCV, Hilux keeps its title of SA’s bestselling bakkie and SA’s overall bestselling vehicle. It’s also the only vehicle to have crested the magic 3,000 mark with 3,100 units finding new homes in February. Hiace, shares the LCV spotlight with 1,109 units shifted while the Land Cruiser 79 ‘picked up’ 315 new sales for the month.

Looking at the rental market, Toyota took a commanding 30,7% slice of the car hire pie – 1,097 units being passenger cars and 217 LCVs. On the commercial front the star performer for Toyota in the HCV segment was the Hino 500 which garnered 67 sales in February.

In terms of the parts’ report, supply for February was logged at just over 1.4 million pieces distributed locally, with 287 148 pieces exported to foreign markets.