The best cars in South Africa in 2023 – including hatchbacks, bakkies, crossovers, and more
The annual Accelerator Awards have revealed the best-performing vehicles in South Africa in 2023, highlighting the best cars across several categories.
Naamsa’s Accelerator Awards are based on data aggregating car performance – including overall sales, and public and media feedback.
Naamsa is responsible for collecting, processing, aggregating, and publicly distributing various auto industry data sets every month, which it uses to determine the performance of each of the country’s 47 car brands, according to its CEO, Mikel Mabasa.
The Accelerator Awards is therefore intended to give recognition to the top-performing vehicles within the country’s automotive sector and is “made available to the market to support with economic modelling and projections, and to support and inform Government with their global trade negotiations,” said Mabasa.
“What makes the Accelerator Awards unique and so coveted is the fact that it is based on hard facts,” said Mabasa.
“Naamsa is the custodian of all the industry data, from sales to dealer performance, and we thought it prudent to use this information to award the outright best performers in various sales, service, and performance categories.”
The categories
This year, the awards were divided into the following categories:
- Passenger Car of the Year
- Biggest Achiever of the Year (Passenger Vehicles)
- Light Commercial Vehicle of the Year
- Biggest Achiever of the Year (Light Commercial Vehicles)
- New Energy Vehicle of the Year (Plug-in)
- New Energy Vehicle of the Year (Traditional Hybrids)
- Medium Commercial Vehicle of the Year
- Heavy Commercial Vehicle of the Year
- Extra-Heavy Commercial Vehicle of the Year
- Bus of the Year
- Top Locally Manufactured Vehicle of the Year
- Top Exported Vehicle of the Year
- Top Imported Vehicle of the Year
The biggest achiever category refers to models that saw the biggest improvement in sales compared to the previous year.
It must be noted that we only listed the categories that deal with passenger cars and left out those such as the Bus of the Year, Extra-Heavy Commercial Vehicle of the Year, etc.
This year’s awards are also notable for their inclusion of new-energy categories for hybrid and electric powertrains, reflecting the shift away from internal combustion engines, said Mabasa.
The winners
The official winners of the 2023 Naamsa Accelerator Awards are listed below
Passenger Car of the Year – VW Polo Vivo
- Runner up – Suzuki Swift
- Runner up – Toyota Corolla Cross
Biggest Achiever of the Year Passenger Segment – Suzuki Baleno
- Runner up – Honda BR-V
- Runner up – Suzuki Dzire
Light Commercial Vehicle of the Year – Toyota Hilux
- Runner up – Ford Ranger
- Runner up – Isuzu D-Max
New Energy Vehicle of the Year for Plug-in Models – BMW iX3
- Runner up – BMW iX
- Runner up – Mini Cooper SE
New Energy Vehicle of the Year for Traditional Hybrid Models – Toyota Corolla Cross
- Runner up – Haval H6
- Runner up – Toyota Rav4
Top Locally Manufactured Vehicle of the Year – VW Polo
- Runner up – Ford Ranger
- Runner up – Toyota Hilux
Top Exported Vehicle of the Year – VW Polo
- Runner up – BMW X3
- Runner up – Toyota Hilux
Top Imported Vehicle of the Year – Suzuki Swift
- Runner up – Toyota Starlet
- Runner up – Toyota Urban Cruiser
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