Billionaire brothers went from fixing old cars in their backyard to building a secondhand vehicle empire in South Africa
Faan and Dirk van der Walt went from fixing old cars in their backyard to founding WeBuyCars, the biggest second-hand car business in South Africa, which is worth over R16 billion.
While Faan and Dirk may be considered some of South Africa’s best businessmen today, their entrepreneurial journey started with scouring junk mail, buying cheap motorbikes and posting ads on mailboxes.
Faan and Dirk van der Walt grew up on a smallholding in Bronkhorstspruit, a town 50km east of Pretoria, along with their younger sister.
Their father served on the Administration Board, while their mother taught home economics at the local high school.
Unfortunately, their family fell on hard times when their father lost his job and had to take up work as a security guard in Pretoria.
This event taught them the importance of working hard to improve their situation, they explained on the Land en sand podcast.
From a young age, Faan and Dirk learned to work with their hands. They made feed, milked their cow, and grew vegetables in their garden. They also helped repair their family’s collection of old, dilapidated vehicles.
Faan, in particular, took a liking to working on cars. He would often page through vehicle advertisements in the junk mail and dream about what they might look like, since they had no photos at the time.
Occasionally, he would even sneakily use their family phone to call the buyers and enquire about the car they were selling.
When his mother’s car started giving her trouble, Faan convinced his father to buy a Toyota Cressida, which he had seen an ad for in the junk mail.
His father agreed, and they went to Pretoria to fetch the vehicle, which his mother would drive for years to come. Faan found real satisfaction in this process and knew it was something he wanted to keep pursuing.
When he was in high school, he bought his first motorbike, a Kawasaki, which he fixed up and resold for R450, making a small profit.
His next purchase was a Yamaha XT500, which he bought for R800. After making a few small repairs, he sold the bike for R1,500.
It was at this point that the penny dropped for Faan, and he realised that there was a big opportunity in this industry.
The petrolhead teacher behind WeBuyCars
After finishing high school, Faan went to study teaching at the University of Pretoria, where he met his wife. Throughout his studies, he continued buying, repairing, and selling cars.
Out of university, he found a job as a teacher at Menlopark Primary School. While he worked here, he lived in a Wendy house in someone’s backyard.
Fortunately, this residence did come with three parking spots, which was great since he was working on two cars at once at this stage.
However, keeping up with his growing car business was no easy task. Being a young teacher, Faan was given a lot of “dirty work”, which kept him working long hours.
Even so, he was determined to keep finding bargain buys. To make sure he found the best deals, he would wait outside the junk mail head office in Hatfield every Thursday morning at 5 am in order to be first in line for the 6 am release.
Once he bought the paper, he read all the advertisements in his car and called the sellers, asking them to hold their car for him until after he finished school that day.
After working for two years, he and his wife decided to move to England to teach, since they had seen their friends make good money doing the same thing.
So, they set off with two bags, found a tiny apartment and started sending their CVs to job agencies.
Unfortunately, while they managed to find work fairly quickly, they soon realised that the jobs that were available also happened to be the jobs that no one else wanted.
While their work and living arrangements were far from glamorous, they managed their money very carefully, living on only one salary and saving the other entirely.
This, along with Faan’s continued vehicle sales, allowed them to build up a nice stockpile over their two-year stay.
When they returned to South Africa in 2000, with the same two suitcases they had taken with them, they had R300,000 saved up.
They used around R190,000 to buy a house in cash, and put the rest towards the business, which Dirk had continued running in their absence.
From backyard business to a R16 billion empire
While Faan brought a love of cars to the business, Dirk saw the big picture and really pushed for marketing. He had several innovative ideas which pushed their company to new heights.
Unlike Faan, who had sought out people selling their cars through junk mail ads, Dirk started advertising that he wanted to buy cars.
He would drive around Pretoria and post flyers on postboxes with tear slips. This worked, and people soon started approaching him wanting to sell their cars.
Since no one else was doing this, it allowed them to access the market without needing to compete for sales as Faan had done previously.
Dirk also pushed that they needed to have a website. They wanted it to convey exactly what they did, and thus, the name WeBuyCars was born.
WeBuyCars started as a hands-on operation, with the brothers managing every aspect of the business themselves – from washing and transporting cars to handling paperwork and banking.
For nearly a decade, they were the company’s only buyers, operating solely in Gauteng. As their website gained traction, demand spread nationwide.
This prompted them to travel to cities such as Durban and Cape Town to source vehicles. Growth only accelerated over time, leading to warehouse expansions and a broader national footprint.
By 2012, the company began hiring additional buyers in Gauteng, expanding to Cape Town by 2014 and eventually across all major regions.
A major milestone came in 2017 with the launch of the Car Supermarket in Midstream, followed by the 2021 acquisition of the TicketPro Dome – rebranded as the WeBuyCars Dome – significantly boosting its presence in Johannesburg.
The company rebranded in 2020 to enhance its online platform and listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange in 2024, reaching a market cap of over R16 billion.
Today, WeBuyCars sells roughly 15,000 vehicles monthly and employs about 3,600 people. With 129 branches and buying pods nationwide, the company plans to expand to as many as 200 pods as it continues to grow its market share.
WeBuyCars
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