Motus has inked a five-year deal with Indian vehicle manufacturer Tata to distribute its passenger vehicles in the South African market, as well as selected neighbouring countries.

Tata commercial vehicles are excluded from the agreement.

Speaking on Thursday at the group’s financial results for the six months ended December 31, Motus CEO Ockert Janse van Rensburg said the parts and vehicle retailer and distributor would re-introduce Tata cars to the South African public in the second half of the calendar year.

Tata light vehicles were available in the local market almost ten years ago through Motus predecessor AMH Holdings, with the brand active in the small car and bakkie segments.

Motus is already the exclusive distributor of the Hyundai, Kia, Renault and Mitsubishi brands in South Africa.

“We landed a really big fish here,” noted Janse van Rensburg.

He said Tata was currently the number three in the Indian market, with Suzuki at number one and Hyundai at number two.

With Suzuki doing so well in South Africa, Tata is convinced it can replicate at least some of its major competitor’s success.

Janse van Rensburg added that the quality of Tata products had improved significantly since the brand’s initial foray into the domestic market.

The new Tata business unit within Motus is currently homologating the four models selected for the local market, with the initial focus on entry-level cars and small to medium sports-utility vehicles.

“We believe that this is the sweet spot,” Janse van Rensburg tells Engineering News Online, noting that the aim was for Tata to enter the South African market with competitively priced vehicles.

Tata South Africa will operate through an initial network of 20 dealers in the first 12 months.

Janse van Rensburg also noted that Motus had added eight Chinese brands to its new-vehicle retail business, available through a current total of 12 dealerships, to bring the number of vehicle brands on sale across the JSE-listed group to 39.

The Chinese brands include Chery, Haval and MG.

As these eight brands do not yet deliver much in the way of workshop revenue, they are available through multifranchise dealers, where more mature brands with a steady stream of workshop business share their showroom floors with the newcomers.

It had been challenging to pick the winners among the surge of newly minted Chinese brands entering South Africa, said Janse van Rensburg, and Motus had to make sure “it picked the right ones”.

It is the belief that there will be “one or two casualties” among the new Chinese entrants in the coming years.

Janse van Rensburg acknowledged that Motus’s imported brands were facing “a lot of pressure” from cheaper Chinese and Indian entrants, which included made-in-India vehicles, such as those from Japanese brand Suzuki.

However, Korea’s Hyundai and Kia brands have since returned to the drawing board to reconfigure their product offering and increase their competitiveness.

Offense manoeuvres include the launch of the lower-cost Hyundai Exter crossover, as well as an increasing shift to sourcing vehicles for the South African market from Hyundai’s and Kia’s Indian plants.

Motus’ importer business has seen its share of the South African passenger car market drop from 17.8% at the end of June, to 16.9% at the end of December.

At the end of December 2022, this was 22%.

The Numbers
Janse van Rensburg on Thursday reported a tale of two quarters, with the second quarter of the 2025 financial year showing vast improvement on the first.

CFO Brenda Baijnath said Motus had faced margin pressure, strong competition and reduced demand in its vehicle import and retail businesses, but that this had been offset by a strong showing in the vehicle rental, mobility solutions and aftermarket parts divisions.

Revenue for the period under review was down 2% compared with the same period in 2023, to R56.2-billion.

Operating profit was down 4%, to R2.54-billion.

Motus’ retail and rental business make up 70% of the company’s revenue, with import and distribution at 16%, aftermarket parts at 12%, and mobility solutions at 2%.

The company is active in Australia, the UK, Asia and Africa.