Naamsa corrects figures for March new vehicle sales

The Automotive Business Council (Naamsa) has issued a correction for new vehicle sales as reported on April 2. 

“After an extensive analysis of all data harvested, processed and distributed it became clear that a member, Nissan SA, erroneously reported sales figures for its models for March,” said Naamsa.

A system glitch at the Japanese brand led to inaccurate figures:

• the March sales figures of the NP200 bakkie were incorrectly reflected as 1,113 units — the correct figure for NP200 sales during March 2024 was 2,679 units;
• the Navara 1-tonne bakkie reflected 2,277 units sold rather than 467 sales;
• the Magnite sold 468 units instead of the 649 reported;
• Qashqai crossover sales were 110 instead of 157;
• the X-trail sold 23 units, not 35; and
• four Patrol models were sold instead of six as reported. 

That resulted in Naamsa’s initial report of total passenger car sales of 44,237 units being adjusted down by only two units to a corrected figure of 44,235 units.

With the correction, the aggregate domestic new-vehicle sales for March 2024 reflected a decline of 5,879 units or a fall of 11.7%, from the 50,114 vehicles sold in March 2023. 

“While the correction appears negligible, the materiality rests in the segmentation breakdown of the numbers reported. The new passenger car market for the period under review reported last week at 26,577 units has now been adjusted higher by 242 units to a corrected 26,819 units,” Naamsa said.

“This correction confirms a decline of 4,782 cars [instead of an erroneously reported number of 5,024 cars] or a loss of 15.1% compared with the 31,601 new cars sold in March 2023.” 

The initially reported number for domestic sales of new light commercial vehicles, bakkies and minibuses — 14,870 units — was 244 units less at 14,626 during March, recording a decline of 916 units or a drop of 5.9%, from the 15,542 light commercial vehicles sold during the same period in 2023 as effected by the Nissan system error. 

The Nissan NP200, which marked the end of its production on March 31, registered its strongest performance with sales of 2,679 units in March. However, the record was distorted by inaccurate data which led to some of those numbers attributed to the Nissan Navara instead of the NP200.

“It is important to issue this erratum not only to correct the numbers and our public records, but also to allow Nissan to celebrate the NP200 sales milestone with the South African public and the industry since the production of this model has been discontinued in South Africa,” Naamsa said.

“Naamsa regrets the erroneous release of the data reported to us last week and we will continue to work with our members and partners to ensure the credibility and the integrity of our data is not compromised or contested,” it added.

“Maintaining high data accuracy ensures our records and different data sets meet the criteria for reliability and trustworthiness so they can be used across the market to support policy development, decision-making and to assist applications across the market.”