New-vehicle sales started the year at a blistering pace, with sales in January, at 55 007 units, surging 14.1% over sales in January last year, reports the National Association of Automobile Manufacturers of South Africa (Naamsa).

The association says all major new-vehicle segments recorded double-digit growth, with new-car sales up 12.3%, light commercial vehicles up 20%, medium commercials up 10.6%, heavy trucks up 30% and extra-heavy truck sales up 16.6%.

January export sales, at 17 399 vehicles, jumped by 5 794 vehicles, or 49.9%, compared with the 11 605 vehicles exported in January last year.

While the numbers appeared exceedingly positive, two trends perhaps contributed to abnor- mally high sales in January.

Naamsa says recent exchange rate weaknesses probably stimulated some pre-emptive buying by consumers seeking to avoid price increases later this year.

Wesbank sales and marketing executive head Chris De Kock adds that analysis of the data shows that dealer sales in the passenger and light commercial vehicle markets grew by only 3.8% last month.

“The biggest contributor to the strong sales growth in January 2013 actually came from the rental market, which recorded 48.5% growth in sales compared with January 2012.”

De Kock says the spike in rental sales was an exception and sales are expected to normalise during February.

Naamsa says the overall near- term outlook for the South African automotive sector remains “reasonably positive”.

“Factors that would continue to support domestic sales include the low interest rate environment, replacement demand, [a] highly competitive trading environment with attractive incentives, low debt servicing costs, high technology new-model introductions and strong demand by car rental companies.” Negative Side “On the negative side, rising inflationary pressures would limit growth in real disposable income, which, together with generally anticipated rising new-vehicle prices as a result of the weaker exchange rate, could result in some moderation in the rate of growth in sales over the balance of the year,”

he concluded.