The South African heavy commercial vehicle (HCV) market started the new sales year on a strong note, substantially exceeding the 12% annual growth rate needed to ensure 2006 becomes a new outright record sales year, Nissan Diesel South Africa said on Tuesday.
The segment includes vehicles over 3 500kg gross mass such as buses,
medium, heavy and extra heavy vehicles.
The automaker was quoting the National Association of Automobile Manufacturers of South Africa January new vehicles sales data which showed that sales of 1 926 units was 28,5% higher than the equivalent month in 2005.
“The South African truck market, coming off the back of an outstanding 2005 annual result, has continued to achieve impressive monthly returns in both December and January, notwithstanding the fact that these two months normally deliver the lowest total new vehicle sales volumes of the entire calendar year,” said Nissan Diesel executive vice-president of operations Frans Cloete.
In terms of market share, medium CV sales made up 44,5% of the total sales with the flagship extra heavy CV category claiming 31,2%, while there were 49 new buses sold during the month.
“The main driver of January’s excellent result was a strong surge in HCV segment sales, with this grouping of predominantly distribution trade vehicles now returning to market share levels above 20% for the first time in nearly half a decade,” said Cloete. – I-Net Bridge