An impressive sales figure achieved in a traditionally quiet month has capped an overall fantastic year for Suzuki, the Japanese automotive and lifestyle giant.
Suzuki Auto South Africa sold 2 102 new cars in December for a passenger vehicle market share of 8,18%.
This means Suzuki delivered 27 583 new Suzuki models to customers in 2021, the highest on record.
En route to its new all-time sales record for a full year, Suzuki Auto reported five new dealer sales records and four overall monthly market share records. Since September 2021 nearly one in every ten passenger vehicles sold was a Suzuki.
The brand also set new sales and market share records in its Suzuki Marine division, while Suzuki Motorcycles dominated the hyperbike segment in 2021 with the Hayabusa selling previously unheard-of numbers in the fourth quarter.
The National Association of Automobile Manufacturers of South Africa (Naamsa), the automotive business council, reported that the total passenger vehicle market improved by 23,3% over the lockdown-restricted market of 2020.
Of this, Suzuki accounted for an average of 8,8% of all passenger vehicle sales and 5,8% of the total vehicle market. Naamsa’s sales statistics reveal that Suzuki reached an average market share of 9.41% in the last quarter, which points to further growth and the potential to reach even greater heights in 2022.
Henno Havenga, manager of auto dealer sales at Suzuki Auto South Africa said: “The past year was filled with many challenges that troubled all car manufacturers. These includes significant delays at our main ports, a shortage of vehicles and further lockdown restrictions.
“Despite this, the entire team at Suzuki worked extremely hard to source as many vehicles as possible, to design the right product line-up to meet the needs of customers in the current economic climate and to support our dealer network.”
October belonged to Suzuki’s dealer network, which has since grown to 75 dealers. In this month, the brand sold 2 593 vehicles, with dealers registering 2 083 of the units sold. This was a new record for the dealer network.
