Corolla trumps Golf and Focus in resale values

Despite its conservative image the Toyota Corolla delivers the best resale values in its used-car market segment.

It consistently outperforms the other perennial top sellers within SA's C-segment hatch-sedan sector, the Volkswagen Golf and Ford Focus. This has been revealed by Darryl Jacobson, managing director of True Price, a company that provides South Africans with free vehicle evaluations on its www.trueprice.co.za website.

Members of the True Price team attend vehicle auctions every week to document actual prices achieved on auction, and this information is added to the company’s extensive database.Jacobson has analysed this data – split into three categories: cars that have done zero to 100 000 km, 100 000 to 200 000 km and 200 000 km plus. “Then we calculated the actual price achieved on auction as a percentage of the original retail price,” he explains.

“In the zero to 100 000 km category, the Corolla achieves 66% of its original retail sales price versus the Golf at 61% and the Focus at 53%. In the 100 000 to 200 000 km category, the Corolla achieves 52% of its original retail sales price versus the Golf at 48% and the Focus at 42%. In the 200 000 km plus category, the Corolla achieves 46% of its original retail sales price versus the Golf at 41% and the Focus at 38%. No matter which category you look at, the Corolla reigns supreme,” he notes.

Jacobson attributes the domination of the Corolla to a variety of factors. “The Corolla, which has been manufactured for 43 years in South Africa, is somewhat of a motoring icon, with a huge following and a superior reputation.

It’s a massive success internationally too. It overtook Ford's Model T and Volkswagen's Beetle some time ago, becoming the best-selling car model ever sold. More than 45 million have been sold globally since the Corolla was introduced in 1966,” he reveals.

The old ‘everything keeps going right’ slogan of Toyota in South Africa is still very much top of mind, says Jacobson. “South Africans are comfortable with the Corolla. They perceive it as a very reliable vehicle that it supported by a massive dealer network,” he notes.

The 12th generation Toyota Corolla hatch, which had its world unveiling last month, will go on local sale in 2020. The Corolla hatch (it will no longer be called the Auris) arrives here in the first quarter of next year.