Africa: Hyundai ahead of Toyota in 5 major countries!

The Hyundai Elantra was elected 2012 Car of the Year in South Africa

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Just as Hyundai kick starts its brand new Brazilian manufacturing plant in Piracicaba, Sao Paulo with an annual production capacity of 150,000 vehicles and targeting 10% of the local market with the made-in-Brazil-for-Brazilians Hyundai HB20, extremely rare sales figures for Africa were released by The Korea Herald. Hyundai has been competing closely with Toyota to become #1 in Africa, posting monthly sales growth rates of about 50% on average in the region.

Hyundai is currently #2 in Africa with about 12% share of the continent’s market with Toyota leader at 14.7%. However, The Korea Herald says Hyundai has surpassed Toyota in five major countries: Algeria, Angola, Morocco, Egypt and South Africa. For Algeria, Morocco and Egypt, if you are a regular BSCB reader this will come as no surprise to you as sales figures are regularly available and show clearly Hyundai doing much better than Toyota there. This is mainly thanks to models whose previous generations are still on sale at low prices: the Verna, a 2000 Accent, is #1 in Egypt and was #3 in Algeria in 2011, while the 2004 Hyundai Atos was #2 there.

The Hyundai Verna is #1 in Egypt

For Angola this is new news to me as this market is still very secretive when it comes to car sales figures. The big surprise is South Africa, simply because Hyundai oddly does not release any sales figures for that country… which is a shame because Toyota sold 7,325 Passenger Cars in South Africa in August (#2 behind Volkswagen) and 4,622 Light Commercial Vehicles (#1 ahead of Chevrolet) for a total of 11,947 vehicles overall, placing it #1 well ahead of Volkswagen at 9,898 units. This means if The Korea Herald are correct, Hyundai is simply #1 in South Africa, by the largest car market in Africa!

Another piece of interesting information released by The Korea Herald is the fact that sales in the above five nations account for more than 80% of all automobile sales on the African continent, which means Hyundai is putting itself in a very good position to grab the overall lead in Africa in the near future.

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