August saw the most new cars ever sold in one month in South Africa, the National Association of Automobile Manufacturers (Naamsa) said on Monday.
”Assisted by strong consumer demand and purchases by the car rental industry, new car sales were nothing short of spectacular,” the organisation said of the 39 215 units sold.
Sales of commercial vehicles, bakkies and minibuses also reached an all-time high with 17, 37 units being sold.
On a year-to-date basis, light commercial vehicle sales remained 15,9% ahead of the corresponding eight months of 2005.
Sales of vehicles in the medium and heavy truck segments of the industry also registered records with the August 2006 sales of medium commercial vehicles at 1 329 units and sales of heavy trucks and buses at 1 847 units.
”The medium and heavy segments would continue to benefit from strong fixed investment and infrastructure development in the run up to 2010,” Naamsa said.
Aggregate vehicle export sales for the first eight months of 2006 of 114 288 vehicles had registered an improvement of 35 684 units or 45,4% compared with the 78 604 export sales during the first eight months of 2005.
Sales of new cars and commercial vehicles continued to break records.
However, the industry anticipated that sales would, during the months ahead and into 2007, start to consolidate on the back of recent and expected further increases in interest rates, record energy costs and some pressure on new vehicle pricing. — Sapa