AUTOMOTIVE
Follow the dealer money Manufacturers can make ambitious claims when launching a brand, but dealers have less room for romance. A franchise needs floor space, staff, training, stock, workshop capacity and parts, and a dealer group that adds a marque is betting enough customers will arrive to justify that investment.
Super Group has been expanding its representation of Chery, Geely, GWM, Omoda, Jaecoo, Mahindra, Tata, and other Asian brands, supporting solid growth in its South African dealership revenue. Motus, one of the largest automotive retail groups in the country, is making much the same calculation. Its 2026 pre-close presentation describes a " deliberate pivot " towards a dozen growing and emerging brands as customer preferences change, and the company has added Chinese and Indian franchises to existing sites rather than treating them as a separate niche, sitting within the same dealer infrastructure as names South Africans have known for decades.
Rather than rebuilding alone, Tata appointed Motus as exclusive distributor, which provides established distribution, aftersales and parts infrastructure alongside the brand ' s own expansion plans. Motus has bigger ambitions than merely selling the first vehicle. Its integrated report identifies future workshop and parts revenue as part of the attraction of the relationship.
The economics of a dealership extend far beyond the moment a new car leaves the showroom. Finance, insurance, servicing, replacement parts, trade-ins and the eventual resale of the vehicle can all generate income during its life. The initial sale creates the customer; the value chain comes afterwards.
For a dealer, the real question isn ' t whether a Chinese SUV sells this month. It ' s whether the owner returns for servicing, whether parts are supplied efficiently, and whether there ' s a viable used vehicle to sell when the customer comes back four years later.
The rise of Indian vehicles is slightly different. Indian brands such as Mahindra and Tata are becoming more visible, but India has been embedded in South Africa ' s vehicle market for years through cars carrying other countries ' badges, supplying more than half of the country ' s light-vehicle imports in 2025, with China supplying almost a quarter, sharply up on the year before. Many Indian-built vehicles sold here come from global manufacturers using India as a hub for small, affordable cars, Hyundai, Suzuki, and Toyota among them.
So the shift is not simply from European and Japanese cars to Chinese and Indian ones. Global automotive production itself has moved, with China alone producing far more vehicles in 2025 than South Africa ' s entire industry, and the phenomenon is not uniquely South African either. Motus ' s own comparison shows Chinese brands ' share of the UK passenger and light-commercial market rising from under 1 % to close to a tenth over the past several years, a shift South Africa has outpaced.
sabusinessintegrator. co. za 27