Double digit new vehicle sales hit six-month milestone

New vehicle sales in August 2025 (51 775 units) were 18.5% up on August 2024, according to naamsa, continuing a six-month run of year-on-year (y-o-y) double-digit growth benefiting from lower interest rates.

New vehicle sales were 0.6% higher than July, and Lightstone forecasts 2025 sales to climb by more than 11% from 2024's numbers.

Passenger vehicle sales climbed 22.3% year-on-year in August to 36 846 units, and Light Commercial Vehicles sales were 15.1% higher, reaching 12 322 units, when compared with August 2024.

New total market vehicle sales: Jan 2023 - Aug 2025

Overall sales for the opening eight months of 2025 were 14.5% higher than for 2024, and 7.6% above sales for the same window in 2023. naamsa reported 382 154 units sold between January and August, of which 84% represented dealer sales.

Passenger vehicle sales were up 21.3% y-o-y for the eight months, and sales of LCVs were 1.4% ahead compared to 2024. The car rental industry accounted for 12.9% of new Passenger car sales between January and August, ahead of the 12.6% share in the 2024 window and the 12.3% in 2023.

Passenger & Light Commercial new vehicle sales: January to August: YTD 2021 - YTD 2025

While Lightstone anticipates the market will grow in 2025, continued pressures remained throughout the macroeconomic environment, both locally and globally, which could have an impact as the year progresses.

Domestic GDP is expected to grow at 0.9% in 2025 (0.6% in 2024). The Rand is demonstrating resilience against the US dollar but is projected to weaken marginally against other major global currencies, while headline consumer inflation is expected to remain within the Reserve Bank's official 3% - 6% target range.

However, in good news for auto sales, the Monetary Policy Committee of the Reserve Bank has cut interest rates by a total of 125 basis points in the past 12 months, although it is unlikely that there will be any further reductions this year.

Anticipated new vehicle sales for 2025 now sit at around 573 000 units, of which 541 500 are Light Vehicles (Passenger and Light Commercial). Overall, growth in new vehicle sales is expected to end 2025 in the region of 11.1% (up on the June projection of 7.7%).

This is well above the -3% growth in new vehicle sales in 2024, which produced the weakest annual sales figures in three years, and would mark the largest annual total since 2015 (the last time domestic sales topped 600 000 units in a year).

New vehicle sales - 2020 to 2025

Market observations - bodyshape

The Crossover/SUV bodyshape (which includes the Chery Tiggo 4 Pro, Haval Jolion and Toyota Corolla Cross) has entrenched its position as the best-selling Light Vehicle (Passenger & LCV markets) bodyshape in South Africa. In the first eight months of 2025, 157 593 new units were sold, of which 88% were Dealer sales, and 7.5% reported through the Rental channel.

Category sales increased by 35.6% compared to the same period in 2024, making it the best performing Light Vehicle segment in terms of sales growth, and its share of 43.5% of all Light Vehicle sales for the January-August window was higher than the 37.1% recorded for the same timeframe in 2024.

The Hatch (which includes Suzuki Swift, Toyota Starlet and VW Polo Vivo) was the second-best performing bodyshape in terms of volume with 87 263 units sold between January and August. Sales for the Hatch shape were up by 7.6% compared to the same window in 2024.

The second most improved bodyshape for year-on-year growth over the first eight months of 2025 was the Minibus/MPV category (which includes the Hyundai Staria, Suzuki Ertiga and Toyota Rumion). Sales thus far in 2025 (12 732 units) were 26.5% higher than the equivalent window in 2024.

Light Vehicle Bodyshapes - share of Light Vehicle market (January to August: YTD 2023 - YTD 2025)

Hybrid & Electric vehicle sales

Year-on-year growth in new Hybrid & Electric Passenger vehicle sales (which includes Traditional Hybrid, Plug-in Hybrid and Battery Electric vehicles), as reported to naamsa, for the first eight months of 2025 was up 7.1%, at 10 340 units, on 2024, which in turn had jumped 117% from 2023. The full Passenger Market share for these vehicles was 3.8% for the first eight months of 2025.

The non-reporters operating in this sub-segment are unlikely to have contributed more than an additional 0.2% market share to this portion of the market.

Hybrid & Electric Vehicle share of Passenger sales January to June: 2021 - 2025

Traditional Hybrid vehicles contributed 79.7% of the reported sales in the sub-segment over the first eight months of 2025, with Battery Electric vehicles making up 6.4% of sales and Plug-in Hybrid vehicles responsible for 13.9%.

Vehicle price inflation

New Light Vehicle price inflation in South Africa rose 1.1% y-o-y in July 2025, a nineteenth successive month where new vehicle price inflation has come in below Headline CPI (as released by StatsSA - July = 3.5%). The July number was also lower than the June y-o-y increase of 1.2%. On a monthly basis, July vehicle price inflation was unchanged from June, which in turn was 2.2% down on May.

Lightstone's New Light Vehicle Price Inflation vs Headline Consumer Price Inflation: January 2023 - July 2025

Used Passenger Vehicle inflation y-o-y for 2-year-old vehicles was -1% at the end of August (meaning that, on average, a 2-year-old Passenger car retained 1% less of its original value in August 2025 than a 2-year-old car was a year ago). This is marginally higher than July (-1.1%), and an improvement over August 2024 (-1.9%).

For 4-year-old vehicles, inflation was running at -1.5% y-o-y in August, up from July (-1.7%) and the -2.7% in August last year. A 6-year-old Passenger vehicle retained 1.5% less of its value in August 2025 than in August 2024, this was an improvement on the July figure of -1.7%, as well as the August 2024 inflation which was -2.6% y-o-y.