After a year of prolonged misery, one could understand why so many motor industry executives were still not back at their desks yesterday: they wanted every trace of 2016 erased before they could start afresh. December’s new vehicle sales, published on Monday by the Department of Trade and Industry, were every bit as miserable as expected. Worse, perhaps: the overall figure of 41,639 was an abject 15.3% down on the previous December. As a result, full-year 2016 sales were 11.4% lower than 2015. That was just short of the 12% predicted by WesBank CEO Chris de Kock early in 2016 — a forecast that was described by some other market-watchers as excessively pessimistic. The good news, by comparison, was that vehicle exports improved 3.3% in 2016, to a record 344,822. While acknowledging the 2017 global political environment was particularly fragile, the National Association of Automobile Manufacturers of SA (Naamsa) said: “The global economic outlook at this stage remains positive and sh...
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