Kia Motors posts 24.1% increase in July global sales

Dubai: Kia Motors Corporation has announced global sales of passenger cars, recreation vehicles (RVs) and commercial vehicles in July 2008 reached 122,230, representing a 24.1 per cent year-on-year increase.

Cumulatively, through the first seven months of 2008, Kia's global sales increased by 16.9 per cent year-on-year and reached 839,384 units.

So far in 2008, Kia's best selling model has been the C-segment Cerato with 124,058 units sold. It is followed by a close group of three vehicles: the B-segment Rio at 94,340, the C-segment cee'd at 91,857 and Kia's Sportage compact SUV at 87,547. Meanwhile, the A-segment Picanto continues to perform well with 61,498 units sold.

Hyoung-Keun Lee, Senior Executive Vice President, International Business Division, said, "As we enter the second half of 2008, we continue to experience strong sales growth across all markets, and we have achieved consistently high and significant year-on-year gains in China and general markets (including the UAE) in particular. These results represent great performance by our sales team, especially given the difficult industry environment."