I came across a South African automobile magazine a few days ago. Its format was similar to British car magazines, with small reviews of every model of every brand available in the country in the back. The thing that struck me about the South African review list, though, was the huge number of brands available, compared to the US (where many European brands are unavailable) and the UK. Every US brand except GMC, Buick, Cadillac, Mercury and Lincoln was available. Every European brand was available except SEAT. Every Korean brand, including obscure brands like Ssangyong. A ton of Chinese brands. Obscure brands from India, Malaysia and the like. Really, all that was missing was the US brands mentioned above, Holden, Vauxhall, Iran Khodro, the most obscure Chinese brands, and some coach-built enthusiast brands.
My question: of all places on the planet, why does South Africa seem to have the largest variety of automobiles on the market? It’s not exactly a large market, it’s still a developing nation (albeit with a large portion of its population living at North American middle/upper middle class standards),and it’s far from manufacturing centers.
For the company I work for it’s because it is a decent size somewhat developed market that doesn’t have very restrictive regulations regarding vehicles. We can’t sell our vehicles in places like Europe or Japan without a bunch of changes because there is just to many hurdles to jump through to get your product in. From my outsider point of view it appears that the post apartheid government is somewhat chaotic. Or at least they have more important things to do than regulate what product are sold in their country.
In general, countries that have substantial domestic auto industries tend to have more tarrifs and regulations that form barriers to entry for new manufacturers and brands. South Africa has some auto manufacturing, but no beloved local companies that need economic protection.
As Above. Also, I read that most used jap imports end up there (Some end up in NZ where we also have no car import tariffs)
We get some Ssangyongs in NZ too. I think they are trying to out-Hyundai Hyundai and sell dirt cheap cars, but Hyundai have already got the hyundaiing down pretty well, and there’s no hope for them. (Ssangyong not Hyundai)
Population is 49m. Thats a decent size market, with loads of agriculture and low population density, means lots of people needing cars.
Perhaps also related to shipping distances? South Africa is about the same distance by ship from Europe and the US, and not much further from the Far East. So none of the major car manufacturing areas have a particular advantage in cost of transport.
ETA:
I think this could be quite important too: SA has a fair-sized carmaking industry, but no brands of its own, so there’s no “Proudly South African” advantage for particular brands. People here are not, in my experience, aware whether their cars are locally-made or imported.