Kia global sales increase over 53 per cent in November

Kia Motors Corporation has announced that global sales figures for passenger cars (export sales, domestic sales, and sales from overseas plants), recreational vehicles (RVs) and commercial vehicles for November 2009 have recorded a total of 152,826 units sold. This figure represents a year-on-year increase of 53.2 per cent.

By region, Kia posted year-on-year sales increases in China, Korea, Europe, general markets and North America.

Hyoung-Keun Lee, President Kia Motors Corporation, said, “November has proven to be another tremendously successful month for Kia. This month we saw growth across all markets and we will seek to continue to satisfy customers with our ongoing rollout of new, stylish and fuel efficient products, including the recently launched Cadenza.”

Cumulatively, through the first eleven months of 2009, Kia’s global sales increased by 17.0 per cent year-on-year to 1,489,204 units. The Chinese market experienced the highest gain with 221,722 units sold to date, representing a 65.2 per cent increase.

Korea, general markets, and North America also showed cumulative year-on-year sales increases of 26.8 per cent (366,229 units sold), 14.7 per cent (275,105 units sold) and 9.5 per cent (322,488 units sold), respectively.  

To date in 2009, Kia’s best selling model in overseas markets has been the C-segment Cerato (known as ‘Spectra’ or ‘Forte’ in some markets) with 269,864 units sold. Kia’s B-segment Rio and Sportage 4x4 compete fiercely for second place with 159,385 and 157,312 units sold respectively. The European only cee’d comes in fourth, with 114,498 units sold, and the Picanto concludes the top five with 93,826 sales.

Michael Cole, Managing Director Kia Motors (UK) Limited added; “We are delighted at these latest sales results and proud of the contribution that Kia Motors UK has made to the overall figure.  Despite the challenges that 2009 has brought to the industry, Kia will achieve record sales figures in the UK this year.  And we are confident that this success can continue through 2010, even with the end to the Scrappage scheme.   

“It's true that we have done very well on Scrappage, where customers have recognised the great value for money we offer. But at the same time we've also grown our share of the non-scrappage retail market by nearly 0.5% over last year”