Business

Billionaire brothers taking over South Africa with WeBuyCars

Kirsten Minnaar • 18 March 2026

The brothers behind WeBuyCars, Faan and Dirk van der Walt, have big plans to increase the second-hand car giant’s branch network.

The company plans to expand its footprint from its current 129 branches and buying pods to as many as 160 in 2026, with the ultimate goal of extending its reach to 200 pods across all nine provinces.

This would mark a significant growth for a company that started as a back-yard hobby and is now an R18 billion JSE-listed used-car empire.

The company started as a small family operation, with the two brothers defying the norms of the second-hand car industry.

Adriaan Stephanus Scheepers (Faan) and Dirk Jacobus Floris (Dirk) van der Walt grew up in Bronkhorstspruit, Pretoria.

Their mother worked as a teacher, and their father worked as a security guard at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, which was the only position he could find after losing his previous job in 1987.

Growing up, they would work on old, dilapidated cars with their father. He had a particular love for old Citroëns, which would frequently break down and need fixing.

While Dirk didn’t particularly love repairing cars, Faan developed a love for the craft. He would even scavenge through junk mail car advertisements, sometimes calling the sellers pretending to be an interested buyer.

While still in high school, Faan bought his first motorbike, a Yamaha XT500, for R400. He worked on the bike and later resold it for R450.

This sale sparked something in Faan, who continued buying, repairing and selling motorbikes. While studying teaching at the University of Pretoria, he bought and sold his first car – a blue Volkswagen 412.

Even though Faan loved fixing up and selling cars, he didn’t think this hobby would turn into a career. “I never planned on becoming a player in the motoring industry,” Faan explained on the All Things Motoring show.

In 1999, he and his wife, Tanja, moved to the United Kingdom to teach for two years. There, they managed to save R300,000.

When they returned to South Africa, they used R200,000 to buy a house. The rest went towards founding WeBuyCars, which Faan and Dirk started in 2001.

This money allowed them to buy several cars in the R20,000 range, which they kept in Faan’s backyard – their new business headquarters.

Doing things differently

Co-founders of WeBuyCars, Dirk and Faan van der Walt

While Faan brought knowledge and a love of cars to WeBuyCars, Dirk, with a degree in marketing, brought a business-growth mindset.

Initially, Faan bought cars through junk mail and friends. However, he was struggling to find advertisements for bargain vehicles.

Dirk realised that they needed to reach potential sellers before they put their cars on the market. This meant that they really had to push their marketing.

So, Dirk started putting little adverts everywhere, from ATMs and cafes to post boxes. These ads featured the saying “kontant vir jou motor” (cash for your car) and included tear-off slips with their number.

“He was always pushing the boundaries in terms of technology and what the future would hold for us, and wanting to move steps ahead,” Faan said.

Even though the internet was only a few years old, Dirk insisted that the business needed a website. “He was the one who pushed. He was the one who said, ‘Let’s get a billboard.’”

At the time, those who wanted to sell their car had to go out of their way to advertise their vehicle or find a dealer themselves.

WeBuyCars did things differently. By having customers reach out to them, they not only got first access to vehicles but also knew these individuals had the full intention of selling their cars to them.

“It’s a totally different mindset, and that worked well,” Faan said. “That’s what we expanded on when we started this business. That marketing message to individuals – if you want to sell your car, you call us.”

“We’ll give you a great price. We’ll come to you. We’re trustworthy. We’re not going to kick your tyres. We’re not going to negotiate you into the ground. We’re gonna offer you a very fair price, and it’s going to be a pleasant experience.”

Growing the WeBuyCars empire

WeBuyCars listed on the JSE in April 2024

Faan explained that, in the early days of WeBuyCars, he and Dirk did absolutely everything themselves.

“We washed the cars. We drove the cars. We went and dealer-stocked cars. We went to the banks to go and fetch the papers. If I received a lot of cash, I went to the bank and deposited the money,” he said.

“For nearly a decade, Dirk and I were the only two buyers of WeBuyCars.” During this period, they also only operated out of Gauteng.

“But with our website gaining traction, we started getting leads all over the country,” Faan explained. So, they would fly down to cities like Durban or Cape Town, buy a car, and drive it all the way back to Gauteng.

In the coming years, the business only continued to increase in size. As their operations grew, they moved from their backyard to larger warehouses and eventually started expanding across the country.

In 2012, they appointed additional buyers to help them cope with the increased demand for their services in Gauteng, and in 2014, they hired their first buyer in Cape Town. After that, they appointed buyers in all the major towns in South Africa.

In 2017, the company opened The Car Supermarket in Midstream, which was then Africa’s biggest car showroom, housing 1,100 cars under one roof.

The business rebranded in 2020, redesigning its website to make online transactions and auctions more accessible to the public.

In 2021, they purchased the TicketPro Dome in Northgate, Johannesburg, from the Sasol Pension Fund for R175 million and changed the entertainment venue into a large car showroom.

The venue was renamed the WeBuyCars Dome and helped the company to significantly increase its footprint in Johannesburg.

In 2024, WeBuyCars was listed on the JSE, and today, it boasts a market cap of around R18 billion. The company now sells an average of 15,000 vehicles every month and has 3,600 employees.

WeBuyCars is not showing any signs of slowing down, either. “We want to continue on our growth path,” Faan explained.

“We are going to continue grabbing as much market share as we can by serving clients better, opening more branches, offering the service more widely across South Africa and improving the overall way things are getting done.”

Currently, WeBuyCars has about 129 branches and buying pods spread across each of South Africa’s provinces.

“We are rolling out our pods across the country at most big shopping centres in all towns,” Faan said, adding that they are planning to increase that to around 150 to 160 in 2026. “I think the magic number is about 200 of these pods.”