Volkswagen of South Africa celebrated a milestone this week when the 100,000th vehicle to be produced this year at its Uitenhage plant was completed.

This tops last year’s total production of 88 488 units, and is the first time more than 100,000 cars have been built at the factory in a year.

VWSA managing director Andreas Tostmann said the company was "extremely proud of this achievement".

"The year 2005 has marked the announcement of our intention to enter the heavy commercial truck and bus market. In addition, we started construction of our new R750-million state-of-the-art paint shop.

"We will export about 40,000 vehicles to our customers in the Asia Pacific region. This is an all-time record."

Tostmann said the company would also be selling more vehicles in the domestic market this year than before.