Colour me surprised, iol wasn't telling porkies it seems.
https://www.citizen.co.za/motoring/gwm-prices-3-0-p500-and-tank-500/
The pricing seems odd though if the older model stays at its existing prices.
Just having a further think about this, and also that nobody else has released anything, I wonder if this is not IOL being IOL and just making a monumental cockup
One would have to assume that they've done their due diligence with the legal bodies to certify the vehicle can safely tow that weight...
Can't see a manufacturer claiming something like that when they haven't ticked the legal boxes.
Think you may have to fight with them if its in contradiction of the manufacturers warranty terms, but you'll need to find those documents and get yourself armed for a very frustrating experience.
The law wrt to towing is purely a license issue really.
With a B or EB license you can tow up to a maximum of 3500kgs all in as I understand it. If you want to tow more you need a higher license. Though I think there are nuances with braked/unbraked and GCM vs GVM
I really don't think 0-100 is a data point that matter to most bakkie buyers.
Towing, Load, etc are the more important elements.
Then again this is a unibody vehicle, so is more of a soft-road bakkie than anything else.
Come now Champy, you're better than this.
The court so far just denied them an urgent application to overturn the blocking of the accounts, nothing else.