Vehicle sales pick up

Vehicle sales in January picked up after a disappointing year-end in 2012. Total vehicles sold increased to 936 units from a 20 month low of 887 units in December. The 5.5% increase, although not astronomical, is an indication that sales figures were slowly growing but at a relatively slow pace. Data provided by the National Association of Automobile Manufactures of South Africa (NAAMSA) provides an overview of the vehicles bought within Namibia for the month of January.
According to the data, Toyota Hilux remains the vehicle of choice amongst Namibian consumers with 173 units. It was followed by Toyota Land Cruiser which sold 65 units. This lead to light commercial vehicles having the highest recorded number of vehicles sold: 471 units. From the month of December, this represented a 10.8% increase in sales. The second largest category in terms of vehicles sold is passenger vehicle sales. Mainly attributed by sales from the Toyota and the Volkswagen Group (selling 143 and 114 units respectively), the total sales in this category was 417 units.
There was a significant drop in month on month year comparisons of heavy commercial vehicles with 7 units sold compared to the 25 units of Decembers. Extra heavy vehicles doubled in sales with 22 vehicles sold in January. Medium commercial vehicles recorded sales of 16 units and 3 buses were sold. The least sales for the month were those of Opel with a single unit from Opel Astra.
Vehicle sales amongst the popular German manufactures showed similar trends from the previous month. Mercedes Benz recorded 28 units virtually the same as the month of December. Audi sold 14 units, a slight improvement from December. Volkswagen sales stood tall with combined sales for all categories of 118 units sold. This was mainly attributed by sales from the Polo Vivo which sold 41 units.