Continued growth in used passenger car sales and the drop in the average used car price in July bodes well for consumer affordability and the sustainability of the used car market.
Used car sales momentum continued to pick up in July with sales growing by 8% month-on-month. A total of 32,090 units were sold, reflecting an increase of 2,434 units over June, according to AutoTrader Used Car Sales data.
The current value of these used cars sold to date swelled a further 7.3% month-on-month to a whopping R12,932,363,057. And year-on-year growth rose 7.8% over July 2022’s cumulative total of R12,001,698,161.
There’s good news too for consumers. On average they paid less for a used car in July than they might have done in June according to data on AutoTrader.
“The welcome news for car shoppers is that the used car average price of the cars listed has come down from R406,474 in June to R403,003 in July. This drop in average price brings a measure of relief to consumers who face rising prices in just about every other sphere,” says AutoTrader CEO George Mienie.
The sold units came with an average mileage of 72,721km and 2018 average registration year.
Toyota, followed by Volkswagen and Ford sold the most used cars in July. Behind them, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai, Nissan, and Suzuki. Interestingly, French carmaker Renault delivered a coup de grâce to KIA, moving up three spots on the most sold list and overtaking the Korean automaker in the ranking.
The bakkie model battle continued to play out in July. Ford’s Ranger led the way as the most sold used model ahead of the Toyota Hilux with the VW Polo and Polo Vivo following in third and fourth. The usual locally-built protagonists, Toyota Fortuner, Mercedes-Benz C-Class, BMW 3 Series, Ford EcoSport (imported model) Nissan NP200 and Isuzu D-Max completed the top ten ranking.
Among the top selling used variants, Volkswagen’s locally-built hatchbacks outperformed the homegrown bakkies. The affordable VW Polo Vivo 1.4 claimed this trophy with sibling VW Polo 1.0TSI in second ahead of the Toyota Hilux 2.8GD-6, Ford Ranger XL and another Hilux variant, the 2.4GD-6.
In July, it was Mercedes-Benz and Nissan that exhibited the biggest gains among the local carmakers with a 14.9% and 14.4% month-on-month growth in sales respectively. Suzuki however had the largest growth from a non-local manafacturer with a month-on-month growth of 24.3%.