(SEOUL) February 9, 2011 — Kia Motors Corporation announced today its global sales figures for January 2011, recording a total of 179,409 units sold including passenger cars (export sales, domestic sales and sales from overseas plants), recreational vehicles (RVs) and commercial vehicles. This figure represents a year-on-year increase of 19.3%.
In January, Kia posted year-on-year sales increases in all regions of the world – 31.4% in general markets* (40,374 units sold), 25.7% in North America (30,838 units sold), 19.1% in Korea (40,502 units sold), 13.6% in China (40,776 units sold), and 6.8% in Europe* (26,919 units sold).
Kia’s best selling model in overseas markets for the month of January was the C-segment Cerato (known as ‘Forte’ in some markets) with 39,668 units sold. The Sportage compact CUV and B-segment Rio follow with 23,185 and 17,348 units sold, respectively. The Sorento mid-size CUV comes in fourth with 13,774 units sold and the Soul urban crossover vehicle rounds out the top five with 10,891 units sold.
Senior Executive Vice President & COO of Kia Motors Corporation, Thomas Oh, said, “With some encouraging signs of recovery coming out of many major markets around the world and the impending launch of the next generation A-segment Picanto and B-segment Rio later this year, we at Kia are confident we will achieve our 2011 global retail sales target of 2,345,000 units which represents a 12% increase compared to 2010.”
