By Otsile Kadiege

For the past eight months, the South African automotive market has been on a downward spiral when it comes to new vehicle sales. April sales shows some glimmer of hope after domestic new vehicle sales of 38,172 units, reflected an increase of 814 units, or a gain of 2,2%, from the 37,358 vehicles sold in April 2023.

Breaking down the numbers, Toyota took top spot in both Passenger and LCV, with Hilux – on 2,094 units – once again taking the title of SA’s most popular vehicle. Other valuable LCV contributions for the brand came from Hiace on 552 sales (a little off the pace due to a backlog in registrations) and Land Cruiser 79 pickup, notching up a retail figure of 385 units. Toyota adds that there is currently a very high demand for the Land Cruiser 79 and this is directly attributable to how well the transplanted 2.8 GD-6 engine with auto box has been received by the 4×4 community.

Corolla Cross and Starlet take the third and fourth position in the passenger car rankings with 1,573 and 1,148 units retailed respectively. Falling just shy of the top 10 are Fortuner (616), Vitz (529), Urban Cruiser (349) and Rumion (328).

Although still in short supply, RAV4 numbers are easing a little, as evidenced by the 106 registrations for the month. Also of interest in the SUV space is the ongoing good showing by the Land Cruiser 300 which gained another 119 new owners. The introduction of the all-new Prado is just around the corner, but the current model continues to tick along with 89 sold in April. In the niche luxury segment, Lexus shifted 23 NX and 18 super-luxury LX models respectively.

In the MCV space Toyota took second place on the podium with 128 total registrations courtesy of 99 Hino 300 sales, together with 25 Coasters and four Quantums.

On the parts front, just over 1,4 million pieces distributed locally, with over 269 846 pieces exported to foreign markets.