Kia Motors posts increase in July global sales!

– Kia sold 98,218 vehicles globally in July

– Cumulative sales reach 717,485 , an increase of 0.2% year-on-year

Kia Motors Corporation announced that it’s global sales (export sales, domestic sales and sales from overseas plants) of passenger cars, recreation vehicles and light trucks in July 2007 recorded 98,218, representing a 0.1% year-on-year increase.

By region, Kia’s general markets posted a year-on-year sales increase of 15.8% in June with 16,801 units sold.

Meanwhile, sales of Kia vehicles in North America, Europe, China and Korea were 29,600 units, 26,449 units, 5,358 units and 20,010 units respectively.

Cumulatively through the first seven months of 2007, Kia’s global sales increased by 0.2% year-on-year and reached 717,485 units. 

The North America market has experienced the largest gain, selling 200,710 units to date for a 5.1% increase, while the general markets and Korea market showed cumulative year-on-year sales growth of 4.9% and 1.6%, selling 105,791 and 153,655 units, respectively.

The Europe market is also performing well showing a small cumulative year-on-year sales decline of 0.7%.So far in 2007, Kia’s best selling model in export markets has been the C-segment Cerato (known as ‘Spectra’ in some markets) with 109,367 units sold, followed by the Kia’s Sportage compact SUV with 71,295 and A-segment Picanto with 69,520 Meanwhile, B-segment Rio and the Sorento mid-size SUV continue to perform well, selling 66,250 and 54,404 units, respectively.

By vehicle category sold, Kia’s RVs sold 31,342 units in July, an increase of 10.2% year-on-year. Sales of passenger cars were down 1.9% in July, selling 44,231, but cumulatively have shown a year-on-year sales growth of 2.2%, reaching 333,904 units sold in 2007.

Yong-Hwan Kim, Senior Executive Vice President and COO of Kia Motors Corporation, said, “For the second consecutive month, we have experienced double digit year-on-year growth in the general markets; this is a great performance over the summer months by our sales team. We have been making consistent strides to build our brand throughout the world, not just in the major markets of Europe and North American and we look forward to this trend continuing.”

[Source: Kia]