South Korea's top carmaker Hyundai Motor Co. became the best-selling Asian car brand in the competitive German market last year, edging out Japan's Toyota Motor Corp., industry data showed Wednesday.
Hyundai Motor sold 86,866
vehicles in Germany in 2011, while Toyota sold 83,204 cars, according to the
German international manufacturing group VDIK.
The sale of Hyundai
Motor jumped 16.9 percent last year from 74,287 vehicles a year ago to surpass
Toyota for the first time since it made inroads into the German market in
1999.
The South Korean brand's market share in the European country
also went up 0.2 percentage point to 2.7 percent last year, ranking 10th overall
in the German market after U.S. and European carmakers, the VDIK
showed.
Hyundai Motor's smaller affiliate Kia Motors Corp. sold 42,065
vehicles last year, up 14.9 percent from the previous year, it said.
The company had set up exclusive sales distributors in Germany late last year to
expand its market presence, with new vehicle models such as the i30 and i40
gaining popularity in the country.
The German automobile market,
meanwhile, grew 8.8 percent last year, with 3.17 million vehicles sold,
according to the VDIK.
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