South Africa's top-selling cars in June

Pretoria - New-vehicle sales in South Africa took a slight upturn in June, and at 46 678 units recorded a three percent increase over sales figures for June 2017. This is also well above the 42 950 sales seen in May 2018.

The small improvement was driven by car sales, which at 29 886 units was 4.4 percent up on June 2017. Light commercial vehicles, bakkies and mini buses found fewer owners than in June 2017 however, and at 14 261 units registered a year-to-year decline of 0.4 percent. Sales in the low-volume medium and heavy truck segments reflected a mixed picture. At 731 units medium truck sales fell 2.9 percent and at 1800 units heavy trucks and buses were up 10.1 percent compared to the corresponding month in 2017.

Toyota Hilux was not only the most popular bakkie but also the country's overall best-selling vehicle in June 2018. Picture: Toyota

The National Association of Automobile Manufacturers of SA said the improvement in domestic sales was encouraging given recent weak economic growth and investment numbers. It appeared that the new car market had been supported by improved business and consumer confidence.

“However, the decline in the leading indicator of the Reserve Bank over the past two months suggested a challenging economic environment going forward,” said a NAAMSA spokesman. “Normally new vehicle sales during the second half of a calendar year tend to show improvement on first half sales and this reinforced NAAMSA’s expectations of a modest annual improvement in 2018 domestic sales volumes compared to 2017.”

Wesbank expects new-vehicle sales to grow by 0.75 percent for the whole year, while Standard Bank predicts a more optimistic two percent increase.