Which vehicles did South Africans buy most in 2015? With the help of Lightstone Auto we can now reveal the top 20.

Monthly sales figures released by NAAMSA are certainly interesting, but they don’t accurately reflect the number of new vehicles sold to private buyers and fleets. The NAAMSA numbers usually include rentals, as well as cross-border sales to Namibia, Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland, and only drill as deep as model ranges.

What follows here are the top 20 best-selling model derivatives of 2015, excluding rental sales and exports to the countries listed above. The data was supplied by Lightstone Auto.

Volkswagen Polo tops the charts

With more than 10000 sales in a single year, the Polo 1.2 TSI Comfortline (66kW) is comfortably the most popular vehicle on sale in South Africa at present. The top-selling sedan on the local market, and one that is clearly favoured by the likes of Uber operators, is the Toyota Corolla Quest 1,6, which sits at fifth overall.

The top selling double-cab on the market is the Ford Ranger 2.2 HP XL (8381 sales), which is significantly more than the second-placed double-cab, the Toyota Hilux Legend45 3.0 D-4D Raised Body Raider on 1774 units.

South Africa's favourite Double-Cab is the Ranger 2,2 HP XL (Higher-spec shown on image)

The best-selling SUV/crossover is Ford’s EcoSport, which has two derivatives in the overall top 20. We’ve excluded single-cab and extended-cab pick-ups from this list, but the best seller in that segment is the Chevrolet Utility 1,4 Base AC (5533 sales).

Note the following

For the chart above, we’ve excluded rental sales, as well as sales to the following countries; Botswana, Namibia, Lesotho and SwazilandFor 2015, all Mercedes-Benz sales are estimated.Single-cab pick-ups and minibus taxis have not been includedGWM and the AMH & AAD brands Chery, Daihatsu, Faw, Foton, Hyundai, Kia and Proton sales volumes, since August 2015, reflect estimates calculated from the aggregated volumes reported and financial data. The AMH 2006 volumes exclude Citroën.

Go here if you'd like to see which brands and models ruled in South Africa in January 2016.