You can blame Covid-19 or the insipid economy - or both - but the trend of buying down is real. Choosing smaller and cheaper options instead of splashing out has become prevalent in all sectors, including the motoring sector. Last year, entry-level cars accounted for almost half of all the country's passenger car sales.
If you dig deeper into the numbers, you'll find that more than a third of these cheaper car sales were entry-level SUVs. As a result, the Suzuki Vitara Brezza (introduced in 2021) and its clone, the first-generation Toyota Urban Cruiser, were both huge success stories. More so for Toyota than Suzuki... Thanks to the strength of that Toyota badge, more than a thousand Urban Cruisers were sold per month. The Urban Cruiser outsold the Suzuki by a ratio of at least two to one, even though the Brezza cost less and had a more extensive warranty and service plan.
The fact that Suzuki was being beaten by a rebadged version of its own car must have been a source of irritation on showroom floors countrywide. Not that Suzuki was complaining too loudly... It's now the third-largest seller of passenger cars in South Africa, behind Volkswagen and Toyota, thanks to its wide offering of entry-level vehicles.
This story is from the June/July 2023 edition of go! - South Africa.
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This story is from the June/July 2023 edition of go! - South Africa.
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