DAVID FURLONGER: 2023 car sales — hoping for the best, but …
Vehicle sales forecasts are coming under pressure
I hope I’m wrong (my wife says I invariably am), but it looks increasingly likely that South African new vehicle sales in 2023 will struggle to meet forecasts. At the end of March, the market was 2.4% ahead of where it was at the same stage of 2022. By the end of April, the year-on-year gap had halved to 1.2%.
Early this year, most growth predictions for the full year were between 5% and 8% — well below levels enjoyed in the immediate post-Covid recovery period (22% in 2021 and 13.9% in 2022). That was to be expected. Now, given the way things are going, I suspect most marketers would bite your hand if you were to offer them guaranteed industry growth of 5%. ..
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