Naamsa corrects figures for March new-vehicle sales

The Automotive Business Council (Naamsa) has issued an official 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 various models for the reporting month of March 2024,” said Naamsa.

A system glitch at the Japanese brand led to inaccurate figures for its various models. The March 2024 sales figures of the NP200 bakkie were incorrectly reflected as 1,113 units. The correct figure of NP200 sales during March 2024 was 2,679 units.

Furthermore, the Navara 1-tonne bakkie reflected 2,277 units sold rather than 467 actual 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, while 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 to 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 in fact 244 units less at 14,626 units during March 2024, recording a decline of 916 units, or a drop of 5.9%, from the 15,542 light commercial vehicles sold during the same corresponding period in 2023 as effected by the Nissan system error. 

The Nissan NP200, which marked the end of its production on March 31 2024, registered its strongest performance with sales of 2,679 units in March 2024. 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 significantly 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 SA public and the entire industry since the production of this model has been discontinued in SA,” Naamsa said.

“Naamsa regrets the erroneous release of the data reported to us earlier last week and we will continue to work with all our members and partners to ensure that the credibility and the integrity of our data is not compromised nor contested,” it added.

“Maintaining high data accuracy ensures that all 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 various applications across the market.”