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The Citizen
08-07-2025
- Automotive
- The Citizen
Toyota South Africa dominates market share with June sales
Toyota South Africa Motors (TSAM) recorded strong sales in June, reaffirming its market leadership in the competitive local automotive landscape. With 11 670 new vehicles sold, Toyota increased its overall market share to 24.7%. Toyota's passenger vehicle sales totalled 7 016 units, placing the Japanese marque's local arm at the forefront of this segment. The Corolla Cross emerged as South Africa's best-selling passenger car, with over 2 000 units sold. The Fortuner and Starlet followed, registering 878 and 852 units, respectively, and ranking 9th and 10th among the country's best-selling passenger cars. The Vitz also displayed strong performance with 794 units, an increase of 170 units over May. In the premium segment, Lexus recorded 104 units, with the NX and GX, which we sampled in Overtrail guise in April, leading the brand's local success, selling 34 and 33 units, respectively. In the Light Commercial Vehicle (LCV) segment, the Hilux maintained its dominance as South Africa's best-selling bakkie, with 3 032 units sold, earning it a 26.3% share. The Land Cruiser 79 Pick-up and Hiace followed, with 591 and 524 units sold, ranking 6th and 7th in LCV sales. Although The Automotive Business Council reported mixed results for medium and heavy trucks, Toyota's Hino 500 and 700 series saw an overall yearly improvement, with sales rising to 139 units. June also marked Toyota's strongest fleet sales month of 2025, with 3 931 units delivered to business customers via the dealer network. Top fleet performers included the Corolla Cross, Hilux Extra Cab, Fortuner and Land Cruiser Pick-Up. Beyond vehicle sales, the parts division kept up its momentum, with over 1.9 million domestic parts and 309 621 exported components. Toyota also recorded 4 247 vehicle exports for the month. Click here to browse thousands of new and used vehicles here with CARmag! The post Toyota South Africa Dominates Market Share with June 2025 Sales appeared first on CAR Magazine. Breaking news at your fingertips… Follow Caxton Network News on Facebook and join our WhatsApp channel. Nuus wat saakmaak. Volg Caxton Netwerk-nuus op Facebook en sluit aan by ons WhatsApp-kanaal.
The Citizen
05-07-2025
- Automotive
- The Citizen
Toyota Land Cruiser 79 shines alongside Hilux and Corolla Cross
Fortuner, Starlet and HiAce also hit the headlines to help Toyota increase its market share in June. The Toyota Land Cruiser 79 outperformed many more modern bakkies in the June new car sales. Picture: Supplied In a market that is showing strong signs of recovery, Toyota South Africa Motors (TSAM) has once again reaffirmed its dominance in the official June sales figures. 'The current automotive landscape is challenging but the June results from Naamsa's new vehicles statistics display great momentum that the industry has been able to sustain,' says Leon Theron, TSAM Senior Vice President for Sales and Marketing. 'For our operations, the strong demand for the locally manufactured Hilux and Corolla Cross drove Toyota's continued dominance in South Africa's competitive new vehicle market. ALSO READ: Why Mzansi must wait longer for the Toyota Hilux Legend 55 Increased market leadership 'We are pleased with the uptick of Toyota's market leadership to 24.7%, in comparison to May 2025. We do not take this for granted and remain grateful to all our dealer network partners, customers and employees for their continued support.' Toyota's passenger vehicle offerings remained dominant in June with 7 016 units sold. Surpassing the 2 000-mark, the locally produced Corolla Cross shifted gears to pole position as South Africa's top selling passenger vehicle. Other notable performances include the Toyota Fortuner (878) in ninth place and the Toyota Starlet (852) in 10th place. ALSO READ: This is it: 'New' Toyota Hilux emerges in first spy images Selling 170 more units in comparison to May 2025, the Toyota Vitz maintained its strong comeback with 794 units recorded last month. Toyota's premium division Lexus continued its impressive performance, recording 104 units, with the NX and GX contributing 34 and 33 units respectively. Toyota Hilux leads the way The consistent dominance of the Toyota Hilux in the light commercial vehicle (LCV) segment continued with a 26.3% market share, moving 3 032 units in June. In sixth place of the best-selling LCVs, the Land Cruiser 79 Pick-up shifted a remarkable 591 units while the Toyota HiAce placed seventh with 524. June marked the best fleet sales month of 2025 for Toyota, with 3 931 units sold to business customers through the dealer network. Standout fleet models, including the Corolla Cross, Hilux Extra Cab, Toyota Fortuner and Land Cruiser Pick-Up delivered their strongest fleet performances of the year. ALSO READ: Toyota Hilux and Suzuki Swift lead new vehicle sales in April 'In June, we saw encouraging growth from small and medium-sized enterprises, which are increasingly trusting Toyota for their fleet needs. This performance reflects continued confidence in our vehicles, value, and long-term reliability. We thank the businesses that continue to choose Toyota and the Toyota Dealer Network for their critical role in this success,' concluded Theron. The parts division's performance held steady momentum with an excess of 1.9 million domestic pieces and 309 621 pieces exported to international markets. Overall Toyota vehicle exports recorded 4 247.
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
With ‘Left-Handed Girl,' Sean Baker's Longtime Producer Shih-Ching Tsou Is Ready ‘to Come Back to the Director's Seat'
Furious energy down alleys and boulevards. A little girl trying to bond with her distracted mother. A familial gaggle of working-class women. Tactful editing showing off the emotional range of female characters. Humor across nuanced class divides. A massive confrontation where a woman doesn't go down without a fight. You wouldn't be too wrong if you guessed the topic du jour was Sean Baker's ('Anora') oeuvre and moviemaking style. That's because you'd also be discussing the work of Shih-Ching Tsou, Baker's longtime collaborator, friend from film school, producer of his celebrated films 'Starlet,' 'The Florida Project,' and 'Tangerine,' and co-writer and co-director of 'Take Out,' Baker's lesser-known 2004 film about a Chinese food delivery worker in New York. Particularly, you'd be ruminating on the images, characters, and craft of 'Left-Handed Girl,' Tsou's Taiwan-set first feature as a solo director, debuting this week in the Critics' Week sidebar at Cannes, branded with some of Baker's hallmarks since he co-wrote and co-produced it with Tsou, and also edited it. More from IndieWire Logging Trucks, Swimming Pools, and Bathtubs, Oh My! We Fact-Checked Our Favorite 'Final Destination' Deaths 'Dossier 137' Review: Léa Drucker Carries an Ambling Police Procedural About Institutional Corruption Talking to IndieWire over Zoom a few days before flying to Cannes, Tsou frankly spoke of her childhood as inspiration for this fleet-footed, darkly funny intergenerational drama about a mother and her two daughters returning to Taipei to open a stall at one of the city's iconic night markets, even as Tsou's own mom was present off-camera in the room during the conversation. Regarding her relationship with Baker, Tsou credited her two-decade experience working with him in preparing to direct a movie set in her hometown: 'I have learned so much working with Sean, because everything in his films is hands-on. I was doing a lot of things on set, from learning the research process to talking to people from the community. We tried to tell the story as real as possible.' About the return to directing after a long gap of 20 years, she said, 'For 'Left-Handed Girl,' I had the idea since I was very young. The first time I brought it to Sean, he thought it was really interesting. So we started to write the draft together. After every other film that we finished, we would always come back to this film. Unfortunately, the time [to make it] wasn't right. It took a while to get the funding together, to get people interested. I think it's all about timing. This is the time for 'Left-Handed Girl.' This is the time for me to come back to the director's seat.' One of the central conflicts begins when the cute five-year-old daughter, I-Jing (Nina Ye), is reprimanded by her otherwise aloof grandfather for being left-handed. He warns her that the left hand is the devil's hand and wonders why her mother hasn't forced her to become dexterous with the right. The fear this instills in I-Jing — already ignored by her busy mother, nor attended to by her mercurial older sister, I-Ann, who holds a grudge against her mother and rebels by working at a shady betel nut stand — sets off a secrets-unearthing chain of events. The cultural bias favoring right-handedness, however, stands out as a fascinating myth and theme. Unsurprisingly, Tsou is left-handed. 'My mother remembers that she 'corrected' me when I was very young. That was just the time when everybody was expected to use their right hand. You don't want to hit people sitting at the wrong table. Or you don't want to get your hands dirty when you are using calligraphy pens,' she said. Is this superstition a Taiwanese or Chinese cultural belief? An idiosyncrasy of the 80s? Tsou says, 'It's interesting. I actually asked many people. This left-handed thing is actually across cultures: in Japan, in India, in Jewish culture, in German culture, they all think the left hand is the devil's hand. My grandfather also told me about it. It's to scare kids into not using it, but there is some religious basis to it too. It's not necessarily the devil of Christianity. Just something evil.' So when I-Jing starts thinking that she just might be the devil, she begins her klepto phase, stealing trinkets from the night market where she freely roams. In this, the film's arresting central stretch, Tsou's visual language — alive, kaleidoscopic colors and low-placed cameras — really pops, showcasing how all three women, but specifically the two sisters, have gone awry. Speaking to these craft aspects, Tsou says, 'We definitely want the audience to [physically] get to I-Jing's [ground] level [in the night market]. Kids probably see more color than adults, who are more used to it.' By contrast, the betel nut stand where I-Ann works is more neon, greener, and darker. 'When you get to the noodle stand, the color is different again. The color difference shows the different inner worlds and interpretations of the three women.' For Tsou, the night market is as vital a character. ''Yi Yi' is one of the Taiwanese films I really love. Having grown up in Taipei, I recognized so many places in the film. I wanted to portray Taiwan in the same way, show places that bring back the memory, but with different places [than 'Yi Yi']. The night market is chaotic, very communal. It's not just a backdrop or a setting. It actually jumps forward. Especially after living in New York for so long, when I go back to Taiwan, I actually rediscover it. I see all the things that [locals] take for granted. That was the inspiration for me to go back to Taipei. I want to show it to the whole world.' Another of Tsou's favorites is Mike Leigh's 'Secrets and Lies,' where, at the end, a group of people get together at a party, and skeletons scramble out. Similarly, the setting for the high drama at the end of 'Left-Handed Girl' is a fancy restaurant where the extended family and friends assemble to celebrate a birthday. Staying in that one location takes a bit of getting used to, given the fluid camerawork and the nifty, high-energy editing of the film's middle. Tsou agrees, and attributes this dual-pacing strategy to Baker's vision for the edit, and also to the back-and-forth written into the script, a process that began in 2012 when she and Sean arrived in Taiwan, scouted the night market which ended up in the final film, and also auditioned a five-year-old girl with whom they shot the first trailer. The story fell into place once Baker saw Taiwan firsthand. 'Cutting back and forth in the daily lives of the characters, we compare them, see how they move through the day, how they process their environments, and how their busy outer world affects their inner world. The little girl doesn't really understand anything, but you can tell she's trying to understand the meaning of adults' conversations.' Thus the film's intentional camera placement, the characters' inner journeys, and the night market's energy captured by the fluid camera, all become assets for Baker to work with. During the actual shoot — which spanned five five-day weeks — Baker could not be present since at the time due to challenges in gaining a visa to Taiwan. But he was still a significant presence. 'When we were doing camera tests,' said Tsou, 'I had conference calls with Sean. We sat down together with the DPs to tell them how we should shoot the film. We wanted the night market to be fluid. In the restaurant, we wanted to see everybody's facial reactions. We collaborated to get what Sean wanted in the end.' The actors were equally crucial to the success of the film. 'I learned casting through working on Sean's films, [beginning with] 'Starlet,' where I found the old lady in the locker room in LA. [For 'Left-Handed Girl,'] I found I-Ann on Instagram. I didn't want to do a lot of street casting, since I don't live in Taiwan, so I tried other ways, like going online or asking friends. I also went the traditional casting director route, but I didn't find anybody who's authentic. The little girl was recommended by a casting director, and she already did a lot of commercials in Taiwan, so she has a really nice presence.' Given the tumults and local challenges presented by casting, Tsou was the most surprised by Shih-Yuan Ma, the Instagram find who plays the older teenage daughter I-Ann. 'She has never acted before. So I was really surprised when she gave us such a wonderful performance. Especially during the scene when she was crying on the toilet, she cried the first time on cue. After we shot everything, she said, wait, can I do it again? I want to do it a different way. And she did. I was like, wow. She's such a natural grown actor.' Pondering on the similarity in themes of her two films 20 years apart ('Take Out' and 'Left-Handed Girl'), Tsou said, 'My mom has six sisters. Each is married to a different kind of family, some with more money than others, so when we get together, we have a weird dynamic. Sometimes, you [as an individual] end up doing everything on your own. You hope your family will help you, but in the end, everybody has their own problem. So I think it's kind of interesting to see how we're weird and also have a very real family dynamic on screen.' That dynamic, Tsou hopes, is one Taiwanese audiences will identify with. The film has already been invited to the Golden Horse Film Festival in Taipei. 'That's a huge launch pad for our film,' she said. On the Croisette, though, which she is so excited to visit for the premiere, she will benefit from Cannes attendees' curiosity about Baker's next project, a year after 'Anora' won the Palme d'Or, before going on to win multiple Oscars. Surely, the devil's hand is entirely the stuff of myth, and won't influence this movie's Cannes journey. 'Left-Handed Girl' premieres in Cannes Critics' Week on Thursday, April 15. Best of IndieWire The 19 Best Thrillers Streaming on Netflix in May, from 'Fair Play' to 'Emily the Criminal' Martin Scorsese's Favorite Movies: 86 Films the Director Wants You to See Christopher Nolan's Favorite Movies: 44 Films the Director Wants You to See
Yahoo
06-03-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Final-Generation Toyota Starlet Is Down on the Tokyo Street
Though there are some notable exceptions, most of the vehicles you'll see on the streets of Japan will be less than 15 years old. Older cars that were cheap when new are especially rare, which is why today's late-1990s Down on the Street machine caught my eye as I traveled to Akihabara to check out the stunning scale-model selection at Yodobashi Camera. We only got the Starlet in the United States for its second generation, which had rear-wheel-drive and was sold here (only in three-door hatchback form) for just the 1981 through 1984 model years. From 1987 until 1998, the US-market Tercel was built on chassis derived from the next few generations of front-wheel-drive Starlet. That's about the extent of our Starlet experience. In its homeland, though, the Starlet was a strong seller for nearly three decades. Some of the best JDM car commercials ever made were for the Starlet. This one, for example. In fact, home-market Starlet ads got more frantic with each passing year. This one is my personal favorite. The final generation of Starlet was built for the 1996 through 1999 model years. It was available only as a hatchback, with three or five doors. I'm told by a Japanese Starlet racer that the 1996-1999 Starlet five-door is a very rare automobile, because most buyers took the cheaper three-door. The owner has a parking spot sized perfectly for this car, though it appears that the location on a busy alleyway has resulted in some right-side body scrapes. The characters at the upper left of the license plate indicate that this car is registered in the Shinagawa ward of Tokyo. This would be a useful commuter machine for the narrow, crowded streets of Tokyo. It's battered enough so that a few more scrapes won't show, yet still benefits from Toyota reliability and ease of parts obtainment. It's a little bigger than a kei car, but it also has enough power to make long highway drives low-stress. The Starlet was replaced by the Vitz, which we know as the Echo and Yaris.
Zawya
05-03-2025
- Automotive
- Zawya
South Africa's top 5 car brands for February 2025 revealed
The month of February has just passed, which makes it a perfect opportunity to have a look at the best-selling car brands for the past 30 days in South Africa. In January, Suzuki overtook Volkswagen (which includes Audi sales). The Japanese-based brand previously managed to do this in the past, but was it able to maintain its position for another month? Before looking at the top five selling car brands for February, let's look at the new car sales figures for the month. Aggregate domestic new vehicle sales in February 2025 totalled 47,978 units, reflecting an increase of 3,229 units, or a gain of 7.3%, compared to the 44,749 vehicles sold in February 2024, according to Naamsa. 'Despite February being a short month, it was not a particularly short sales month, providing wherewithal for consumers to act on renewed confidence and easing affordability,' said Lebo Gaoaketse, head of marketing and communication at WesBank. Three consecutive downward interest rate adjustments have provided a 0,75% relief in prime lending rates, with the most recent cut in January. 'While further expected cuts would continue to address affordability and stimulate market activity, other inflationary increases, including electricity tariffs and fuel prices, persist and have many economists questioning the expected pace of interest rate cuts, warning there may be fewer cuts throughout the year than previously envisioned,' says Gaoaketse. Top 5 In first place is Toyota South Africa. For February 2025, the brand slid 3.4% year on year to 11,743 units, but still maintains a healthy lead as South Africa's best selling car brand. At the helm of the Toyota sales charts, the Corolla Cross with 1435 units, followed closely with strong performances by the Starlet and Starlet Cross duo with 1,279 and 1,003 units respectively. The Urban Cruiser, finished off with volumes totalling 875 units, whilst the Vitz continued to display character with 551 units. With an additional 64 units sold in comparison to January sales, the Prado luxury SUV boasted a 375 sales tally. In second place is Suzuki South Africa again after besting Volkswagen in January. Suzuki totalled 6,044 units while Volkswagen managed 5,249 in units in third place. In fourth place is Hyundai South Africa with a tally of 3,074 and coming in fifth is Ford South Africa with 2,900 units. On a possible reason smaller brands are performing better month to month, Nada commented: "A notable trend in the market is the growing presence of OEMs competing in the entry and lower segments of the market in the top 10 rankings, with brands such as Suzuki, Hyundai, Kia, Mahindra and Chery gaining traction. "This shift suggests that affordability is playing a key role in driving unit sales, enabling consumers who previously could not afford a new vehicle to enter the market. "Additionally, a 0.25% decrease in interest rates at the end of January as well as speculation over a potential VAT increase may have encouraged some buyers to expedite their purchases."
