Toyota's Smart Play Using Badge Engineering

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This morning I was chatting to my old army buddy and new business partner who was flying to East London to go and fetch a car for his daughter. When I enquired what brand he said a Suzuki one being the price and secondly this model has a Toyota engine. This is what the market calls brand engineering.

Brand engineering is when a company makes a vehicle/product and allows another company to sell that item under their brand name.

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I had no idea Suzuki had a collaboration with Toyota and this makes really good sense and explains why Suzuki is the second biggest car brand in SA by numbers. Everyone who has had a Toyota knows how reliable their engines are and that they will normally outlast the body.

Suzuki is looking after and dominating the entry level motor vehicles in the market and knowing that these are Toyotas with a different badge sounds far better than a Chinese option. Both brands are Japanese so the collaboration sounds like it is working well. Toyota holds a 4.9% shareholding in Suzuki and Suzuki has a 0.2% share holding in Toyota and are roughly worth the same dollar value.

Toyota and Suzuki share research and development technology which helps reduce the overall costs. This is why when you look at certain Suzuki and Toyota models they look fairly similar and you would be right in thinking someone copied the model and that the designers are lazy.

In South Africa Suzuki benefits from the established Toyota brand and can offer far more models in the entry level price range so both brands help boost their sales numbers. This strategy is also used in India and Europe which helps fight off the cheaper Chinese imports. This surely should be the strategy other legacy car brands should be using instead of partnering with the Chinese brands who will replace you eventually. This is not a question of if this will happen and more of a when as those other brands are on a serious decline.

When we look at the total car sales figures for 2025 in South Africa the Chinese are not yet there, but they are as one can see how many Chinese vehicles are on the roads. If Toyota had not collaborated with Suzuki the Chinese would definitely be far more dominant in the market. I will show you how the last month in 2025 with the December figures went and then you will see that next years figures will be dominated by Chinese brands.

2025 total sales numbers in SA per top 10 brand.

Toyota 148 122
Suzuki 71 560
Volkswagen 63 667
Hyundai 35 409
Ford 34 628
GWM 27 202
Isuzu 26 134
Chery 25 304
Kia 18 517
Mahindra 18 100

As you can see Toyota is running away with things and also have sales in Suzuki sitting in the 2nd spot. Two Chines brands sitting in 6th and 8th spot and these brands have come from nowhere. The models these two brands have would have affected other legacy brands attacking them via price and service and warranty deals. If those other legacy brands had another brand they could use they could hold the Chinese onslaught back.

The sales in December tells a different story and why I say the total 2026 figures will be very different to that of 2025.

Toyota 12 933
Volkswagen 5014
Suzuki 4961
Hyundai 3068
Ford 2987
GWM 2453
Chery 2249
Isuzu 1906
Kia 1508
Jetour 1371

Note that there is no BMW, Mercedes, Audi, Nissan in the top 10 on both lists so they are taking a huge knock. If we look back at 2015 which is only 10 years ago the likes of Mercedes and BMW were in 7th and 8th spot registering 25 513 and 21 582 sales for the year. Just to get an idea in December 2025 BMW sold 843 vehicles and Mercedes only 474 so they are now way off the pace compared to Chery and Jetour. Chery is a looking at taking over the Mercedes factory in South Africa. Mercedes is in trouble with with the Chinese owning nearly a 20% share holding BAIC owning 9.98% and Geely holding a 9.69% stake.

Posted Using INLEO