Hyundai And Kia Report September 2013 Sales Figures

The numbers are in, so let’s take a quick look at Kia’s (and Hyundai’s) overall global sales figures for the month of September 2013.

Hyundai Motor Company have announced that they saw their sales dip by 2.1% in September, with the largest portion of the blame being laid at the feet of the partial strikes that took place during the month.

The Chuseok holiday was also believed to have played a role.

A total of 363,970 units were sold by Hyundai globally in September 2013, which was slightly less than the 371,743 units sold during the same period last year.

This represented the first time on 18 months that the company had seen an on-year minus growth, with a 19.6% decrease in local sales also reported.

While the partiall strikes certainly played a role in those numbers, it also didn’t help that the 3-day Chuseok holiday reduced the number of working days usually performed during the month of September.

Kia’s Global Sales Figures

Kia Motors Corp., the second largest automaker in South Korea, also announced that their year-on-year sales had dropped by 9.7% in September, it’s worst performance in over a year.

Kia had sold a total of 193,671 units in September, compared to the 214,379 units they moved during the same period last year.

The September 2013 number represents the worst sales month for Kia since August 2012 when they moved 190,870 units.

Kia believes that partial strikes were to blame for the numbers, with the strikes costing the automaker in the region of $384 million in lost production.

Kia is still up 3.3% year to date, with 2.07 million units sold.

South Korean Market Sales Figures

September 2013 was a difficult month for Hyundai and Kia Motors, as both carmakers suffered steep declines in domestic-market sales.

Hyundai and Kia sold 46,257 and 32,123 units, respectively (-18% compared to a year ago).

On the other hand, we have Renault Samsung Motors which sold 4,957 units in Korea (up 23.8%) and Ssangyong with monthly sales of 4,432 units (up 9.8%).

Meanwhile GM Korea, the 3rd biggest carmaker in South Korea, managed to move 13,252 vehicles last month, up 18.5 percent from a year ago.