Kia records 13.9% global sales growth in January

KIA MOTORS Corp. announced recently a big jump in its global sales figures (export sales, domestic sales and sales from overseas plants) for passenger cars, recreational vehicles (RVs) and commercial vehicles for January 2013, recording a total of 211,088 units sold for a year-on-year increase of 13.9 percent.

In January, Kia posted a strong double-digit year-on-year sales increase in China of 50.3 percent (57,575 units sold) along with positive gains in all of its other major sales regions—6.3 percent in Europe* (38,059 units sold), 6.0 percent in Korea (36,250 units sold), 4.1 percent in General Markets* (39,229 units sold) and 1.7 percent in North America (39,975 units sold). It was the highest total global January sales ever for Kia.

Kia’s best-selling model in overseas markets for the month of January was the B-segment Rio (known as ‘K2’ in China) with 35,860 units sold. The C-segment Cerato (known as ‘Forte’ in some markets) was the second best seller with 33,940 units delivered, while the Sportage compact CUV, Optima D-segment sedan and Sorento midsize CUV followed with 30,565, 19,962 and 14,881 units sold, respectively.

Tae-Hyun (Thomas) Oh, executive vice president and COO of Kia Motors Corp., said, “It’s always great to kick off a new year with double-digit year-on-year sales growth, and we are particularly pleased to see China perform so amazingly well. We expect our momentum there to continue, and our third China plant, which we broke ground on last year, will be a catalyst for continued growth in this strategically significant market.”