With the full suite of P300 derivatives now in the local bakkie market, the head of GWM SA says the Chinese firm is eyeing a regular top 5 place for the P-Series range…
- Local boss says P300 sales are “picking up significantly”
- Full suite of P300 derivatives now available in Mzansi
- New 3.0-litre turbodiesel on the cards for P500 in 2026?
The man at the helm of GWM South Africa says now that the full suite of P300 derivatives is finally available, the P-Series range – which also includes the larger P500 – has a stronger chance of regularly placing inside the top 5 on the list of Mzansi’s best-selling bakkies.
Conrad Groenewald, Chief Operating Officer of GWM South Africa, was speaking during a wide-ranging interview conducted in Cars.co.za’s custom-built podcast booth at Naamsa’s South African Auto Week 2025 in Gqeberha in the Eastern Cape at the start of October.
“P300 with the new 2.4 turbodiesel is picking up significantly. I think we’re kind of trying to get into the top 5 bakkie sales in South Africa,” Groenewald said, adding that the P300 double-cab derivatives offered “a lot of bang for your buck”.
Over the opening 9 months of 2025, the P-Series has placed 5th on 3 occasions: in April, August and September. Year to date at the end of September 2025, this model range sits in 7th on 3 355 units. That’s a mere 338 sales behind the Rosslyn-built Nissan Navara (3 693 units) and 914 units behind the seemingly evergreen Toyota Land Cruiser 79 (4 269 units).
“We’ve had a bit of a staggered launch on the P300. We launched with the LT followed by the LS, and we’ve recently put the SX into the market. We haven’t had the full suite of the P300 line-up [until now], so we’ll hopefully – touch wood – start seeing a significant uptake in our volume on P-Series,” Groenewald told us.
As a reminder, the P300 debuted in South Africa in 2.4TD form (initially available in LT and LTD guise) in February 2025, before the Chinese firm added new 2.4TD LS derivatives in July 2025. The base P300 2.0TD SX variants (offered exclusively with the older 2.0-litre turbodiesel engine) finally arrived to complete the facelifted P-Series range in mid-September 2025.
Nailing down 5th position would technically give the P-Series the title of South Africa’s most popular fully imported bakkie, with the locally built Toyota Hilux, Ford Ranger and Isuzu D-Max serving as the perennial podium finishers and the KwaZulu-Natal-assembled Mahindra Pik Up having made 4th place its own (since the departure of the Nissan NP200 half-tonner, that is).
Does GWM SA have anything else up its sleeve when it comes to the P-Series line-up? Well, while the Chinese brand made mention of the P500 PHEV at its dealer awards event back in February 2025, it’s our understanding that this plug-in derivative is off the table (for now, at least).
However, there is another new powertrain that may well be on the cards for the P500 – and arguably well suited to SA. Nicole Wu, Chief Technology Officer at GWM International, recently announced during an event in Australia that the brand will introduce a new 3.0-litre turbodiesel engine for both the Cannon Alpha (which we know here in SA as the P500) and the Tank 500 in that market in “mid-2026”.
As Australia is a fellow right-hand-drive market closely aligned with South Africa, it seems likely this new 3.0-litre oil-burner will also be under consideration for the SA-spec P500 (though we’d speculate only in the 2nd half of 2026). No technical details have yet been released, but thanks to its added displacement, the new 3.0-litre engine should easily exceed the peak outputs of its 135 kW/480 Nm 2.4-litre counterpart…
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Q: What is GWM South Africa’s sales goal for the P-Series bakkie range?
A: The head of GWM South Africa, Conrad Groenewald, says the Chinese firm is aiming for the P-Series range (which includes the P300 and P500) to regularly place inside the top 5 on the list of Mzansi’s best-selling bakkies.
Q: Why does GWM SA expect P-Series sales to pick up significantly now?
A: GWM SA’s COO noted that they have only recently had the “full suite” of P300 derivatives available. The range was completed in mid-September 2025 with the arrival of the base P300 2.0TD SX variants.
Q: Is a new 3.0-litre turbodiesel engine planned for the GWM P500 in South Africa?
A: A new 3.0-litre turbodiesel engine is scheduled to be introduced for the Cannon Alpha (P500) in the right-hand-drive Australian market in “mid-2026”. It is considered likely this new engine will also be under consideration for the SA-spec P500, possibly in the second half of 2026.
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