DAILY - UPDATED
KIA NEWS
&
SPY SHOTS
REVIEWS
SALES REPORTS

updatedNewsAreaBottom

Kia Motors reports 18% global sales growth in May 2011

Kia Motors announced its global sales figures for passenger cars and recreational vehicles for May 2011, with a record total of 207.839 units sold. This represents a year-on-year increase of 18.7 percent over the same month a year ago.

The best selling Kia Motors’ car for the overseas market (which includes every market excluding the home country of Korea) was the C-segment Cerato/Forte. With 38.204 units sold in the overseas market in the month of May 2011, the Cerato has definitely caught the interest of consumers.

The second-highest selling vehicle from Kia was the popular Sportage crossover, selling 28.563 units during the same month of May. The rest of the top sellers were the mid-size CUV Sorento with 18.459 units sold, B-segment Rio with 18.191 units sold, and the 2012 Soul crossover vehicle with at 17.812 units sold.

The year-to-date numbers for these models are encouraging too: Cerato/Forte leads the pack with 184,466 units sold over the first five months of the year. The other four vehicles, Sportage, Rio, Sorento and Soul, have 128.948 units, 91.811 units, 83.522 units, and 76.209 units sold respectively over the same period.

These encouraging numbers for May come in the wake of record-breaking sales for the first five months of 2011, during which period Kia has sold 988.011 units, showing a year-on-year increase of more than 20 percent.

North America has shown the greatest increase in sales numbers, with a gain of 42.4 percent (at 226.078 units sold).  Other regions too have shown double-digit growth over the same period, including China (17.6 percent growth with 169.691 units sold), general markets (15.9 percent growth with 202.389 units sold), Europe (15.5 percent growth with 183.708 units sold) and Korea (12.2 percent growth with 206.145 units sold).

With North America seeing a year-on-year growth of more than 42 percent over the first five months of the year, the car manufacturer is expecting heavy demand for the car in the region if the trend continues.

According to Thomas Oh, Senior Executive Vice President & COO of Kia Motors Corporation, Kia is looking forward to maintaining strong momentum in all of its strategic markets in the coming months, buoyed by the arrival of the next generation Picanto city-car and 2012 Rio sub-compact car in Kia showrooms around the world. [Source: Kia]

10 thoughts on “Kia Motors reports 18% global sales growth in May 2011

  1. Mission Control, be prepared to Launch the new 2012 Kia Rio5 and watch Kia sales Take Off! My guess it will only be limited by production capabilities and dealer inventory. Go Kia!

  2. You need to fix your typo in the above atatement; “and the 2012 Soul crossover vehicle with at 17.812 units sold.”
    The 2012 Souls aren’t even out yet let alone available for sales.

  3. Honda, Datsun and Toyota set the precident between the 60’s and 80’s, introducing cheap products in the U.S. to get their foot in the door first then after building dealer and customer infastructure slowly improve quality and stlye leading to improved customer perception and ultimatly higher market share and profits. In today’s age where “the world is flat” and anything that happens anywhere in the world is know minutes latter, Hyundai and Kia have been able to do what the Japaneese automakers did but in less than half the time. The transformation of Kia and Hyundai is quite predictable if you have been paying attention. Who would have thought?

  4. you forget about Daewoo. It story in the auto industry should be about Hyundai, Kia, and Daewoo.
    Unfortunately the story ended up with a disapointing ending, with Daewoo being sold to Shatty Grand Master for peanuts. And the shatty grand master breathes life into their pathetic cars due to Ignorant Korean serfs.

    It would have been amazing if Daewoo truly developed into a competitor against Hyundai. Since in Korea there is no competition outside of Hyundai/Kia group

  5. I agree with sagittarius about Daewoo. Daewoo, a huge Korean conglomerate much like Mitsubishi Industries is in Japan, manufacture everything from consumer electronics to automotive products. Due to managerial and marketing screw ups, someone drop the ball and well, the rest is history. Actually, for a brief period of time Audi was involved with Daewoo automotive division and I thought they would have given them the boost to succeed, obviously it failed. While “Brgator” posting is for the most part accurate, there have been plenty of other players participating in the Automotive marketplace that could never evolve and gain traction. Lots of British, Italian, Russian, and Eastern European vehicles were brought over to both America and Canada and failed. I`m not sure if India will attempt breaking into the North American market but I`m sure the Chinese will follow the Japanese and the Koreans in the not too distant future to attempt the same. Whether they succeed or not remains to be seen.

  6. I`m ready to pull the trigger and take the 2012 Rio5 home when it arrives and I can locate one with the color and option content I`m looking for. I believe Bryan Posted he won`t be ready for a few years. I hate “kicking tires” unless there in my driveway.

  7. Most of that negative biased crap that JD Powers usually publishes is (perceived) quality and not actual reported defects. They always have and always will love Toyota and Honda. Toyota at one time deserved to have all the bragging rights. There are Thousands o f15 to 20 year old Camry`s still driving around South Florida. Its the unofficial Flag of Haiti, they simply won`t die! Toyota of late is not the same as the Toyota of old. It`s absolutely ridiculous that Hyundai gets great reviews and praise and the Kia products which are virtually the same identical mechanically cloned vehicle get mediocre or poor grades, go figure?

  8. my post got deleted.

    who is edited this thread?

    I said that GM is so ashamed of Korea that they don’t even list the supplier of the year awards for the internet. Because Korea is dominating the list.

  9. “Dude it’s not that serious. How long did it take you to type all that? An hour, two days?”

    it took me twenty minutes to write that up. And yes it is a serious isssue because billions of dollars are beings siphoned away from Korea from The Corporate Trash that is Grand Master. Not only are they making bilions of dollars they are even ashamed to admit that Korea is the impetus to their growth. As well as national respect is being stolen by the likes of non-deserved corporations like GM, since they could hardly make a car that was competent until they took Daewoo away from Kim Woo Choong.

    For example GM used to publish the supplier of the year awards every year up to 2009. In 2009 Korea dominated the list with 30% representing Korean suppliers. Well in 2010 GM did NOT publish the list because Grand Master knows too well that Korea would probably make an EVEN larger portion of the so called supplier of the year.

    “’s all biased. Kia has 113 problems tied with Audi. Chyrsler has 110 problems. I think. Chrysler is not better than Ford. ”

    Yes ii is biased, since I noticed that differential in so called quality ratings between Hyundai and Kia by the so called automotive quality experts. Since Kia and Hyundai are very similar cars in engineering standpoints. Not only did Hyundai win the Best quality rating in Germany in 2010, I would say that Kia would also be of a similar level. Where certain bodies like JD or Consumer ratings will rate the Hyundai and Kia at significant margins apart. And, Generally lower than the Japanese Auto Makers.

  10. I have to make a correction.

    GM did publish the 2010 Supplier of the year.

    But All the great Korean suppliers did not get mentioned. Only Korea Express, LG Chem, Youngsham got so called ‘honored’ From the Grand Master. What a joke, seriously.

    I mean I don’t see Hyundai and Kia List a supplier of the year awards to their KOrean, and international brethren.

    Secondly, It so bizarre to see Korean people continue to work for ,subsidize, the so called GM cars, that GM shareholders will profit from and more importantly American Executives take credit for. I as a Gorean person took to time to research the relationship or corporate ownership between the Grand Master and ‘Great Universe”. I eventually ascertained the precise nature of the absolute corruption that occurred in the IMF led takeover of Kim Woo Choong’s Daewoo. Learning about the corruption in corporations isn’t difficult to find or search for.
    But Korean engineers, machinists, mechanics, union metal workers , just don’t know about pure wretchedness of
    What the IMF did to Kim Woo Choong and his Daewoo Corporation. So the lies and deceit continues in South Korea. Korean people continue to support and buy Grand master’s illicit visions of grandeur. Which is more exploitation of Korean engineering to further their Masonic Ideals in automotive landscapes.
    __________________________________________________________________________________________

    The difference between HKAG and Grand MAster is that HKAG acknowledges the important team members that contribute to the success of the organization. While GM provincially acknowledge a bunch of mentally challenged front-men to take credit for their so called ‘Made in America’ Vehicle.