Tata is Back : Confirmation that we’ve been waiting a couple of months for has now finally filtered through: the Tata brand will return to South Africa’s passenger-vehicle battleground sometime in 2025, a good 6 years after it softly departed the scene.Just as a refresher, as the Indian brand’s passenger-car and light commercial-vehicle operations exited Mzansi at some stage in the 2nd half of 2019, larger commercial vehicles under Tata’s stable (namely buses and trucks) still stay in the local market, courtesy of Tata International South Africa
But in its 6 months ended 31 December 2024 interim results, Motus – which is the distributor of the Hyundai, Kia, Mitsubishi and Renault brands in SA – confirmed it had “entered into a distribution agreement with Tata to be the exclusive importer of passenger vehicles into SA and certain neighbouring countries”.
Motus says it intends to re-enter the South African passenger-vehicle market with Tata Indian marque Tata late in the 2nd half of 2025 (before it was AMH Group traded Motus was also responsible for the distribution of the Tata passenger brand in SA), according to Engineering News OnlineThough it remains unclear exactly which Tata products will be made available in South Africa at this time; whilst in its presentation Motus suggested the Indian brand was “well positioned to play in the entry-level to
small and medium SUV segments”. Additionally, the company confirmed to Engineering News Online it was homologating 4 models for the local market.Given the list of cars available in India, there are a few candidates that could work. For example, both the Punch and Nexon are compact crossovers, whereas the Curvv, Harrier and Safari are the larger offerings in this popular raised-roof segment