Motoring16.09.2022

Cheapest cars in South Africa that can drive 20 kilometres on a litre

Several budget cars in South Africa can drive 20 kilometres or more on a single litre of fuel.

Although petrol and diesel prices have come down in September, they are still much higher than they were for most of 2022.

With the price of unleaded 95 at R23.38, it will still cost more than R1,000 to fill up a modest 45-litre fuel tank.

While several highly fuel-efficient hybrid models on the market offer much better fuel consumption than the typical petrol or diesel car, they are relatively expensive.

At the time of publication, the cheapest hybrid car you can buy in South Africa was Toyota’s Corolla Cross Hybrid, with a starting price tag of R425,400.

However, it should be noted that orders for this car placed in February this year have not yet been filled.

MyBroadband scoured the new vehicle market in South Africa to find ten cars costing less than R250,000 with a claimed combined fuel consumption of around 5 litres per 100 km or better.

That is equal to 20 kilometres or more per litre.

Most of the cars we found were small hatchbacks or “mini SUVs”, with the exception of a single sedan on offer from Suzuki — the Dzire.

The Japanese company also had four other cars meeting the pricing and consumption criteria, proclaiming its dominance in this segment.

Suzuki Dzire

The most fuel-efficient of this bunch was the Suzuki Celerio, which had a claimed efficiency of 4.4l/100km, working out to nearly 23 kilometres per litre.

But the king of low consumption overall was the characterful Fiat 500.

The entry-level TwinAir Cult model has a R223,900 price tag, which gets you a 0.9-litre turbo-petrol engine that delivers 63kW of output and 145Nm of torque.

That engine offers a staggeringly low combined consumption figure of 4 litres per 100km, equivalent to about 25 kilometres per litre.

The Dolcevita variant of the Fiat 500 goes as low as 3.8l/100km but costs over R280,000.

A lone diesel contender

Another interesting observation was that nine of the 10 cars used petrol, while only one came with a diesel engine — the Mahindra KUV 100 Nxt 1.2TD K6+.

Diesel cars are typically more fuel-efficient than their petrol counterparts with a similar amount of power, but models with diesel-powered engines are also more expensive.

Below are ten cars you can buy new in South Africa for less than R250,00 with combined fuel consumption figures of 5l/100km or less.

We chose the model from each range with the lowest fuel consumption and did not include other variants of the same car.

Prices and specifications were taken from the Car Prices section on the motoring news website Top Auto.