Sales by South Korean automakers shrank 3.4 percent on-year in January as the slowing economic recovery in emerging markets and competition from foreign rivals hurt overseas shipments, industry data showed Monday.The combined sales of the five local automakers in January came to 717,332 units last month, down from 742,655 in the same month a year earlier, according to data provided by the companies. The total excludes complete knockdown kits that are assembled abroad.The five are Hyundai Motor C

Ssangyong Motor Co., the local unit of Indian sport utility vehicle maker Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd., said Monday its sales for January slumped 10.7 percent from the previous year, hit by the weakening Russian ruble that dented the company's overseas shipments.Combined sales at home and abroad came to 10,321 units, down from the 11,562 units sold a year earlier, the carmaker said in a press release. Compared to the previous month, sales plunged 19.1 percent.The sales figures exclude complete knock

Hyundai Motor Co., South Korea's top automaker, said Monday that its January sales fell 6.7 percent from a year earlier, affected by weakened demand and stiffer competition at home and abroad.Hyundai Motor said in a statement that it sold 385,868 vehicles in January, down from 413,390 units tallied a year before.Its domestic sales came to 50,413 units, down 2.2 percent from a year earlier, while overseas shipments shrank 7.3 percent on-year to 335,455 units, the company said."Sales here declined

GM Korea Co., the local unit of General Motors Co. of the United States, said Monday its January sales shrank 3.8 percent from a year earlier despite strong demand in the domestic market.South Korea's third-largest carmaker sold a total of 51,585 vehicles last month, down from 53,606 for the same month of 2014, the company said in a press release.Its domestic sales jumped 9 percent on-year to 11,849 units on the back of strong demand for steady selling models, such as the Spark, the Malibu midsi

Renault Samsung Motor Co., the local unit of French automaker Renault S.A., said Monday its January sales jumped by more than 150 percent from a year earlier, bolstered by strong overseas sales.A total of 16,784 vehicles were sold by Renault Samsung last month, up 150.6 percent from the 6,698 units from the year before, the company said in a statement.Outgoing shipments, in particular, jumped by more than fivefold to 11,045 units in the same period, with sales of the Rogue crossover sport utilit

Kia Motors Corp., South Korea's second-largest automaker, said Monday its sales dropped 1.8 percent in January from a year ago, affected in part by fewer working days at some of its overseas factories. The carmaker sold 252,774 units overall last month, down from 257,399 vehicles a year earlier, Kia Motors said in a statement.Of the total, domestic sales grew 8.2 percent on-year to 36,802 units. Overseas sales came to 215,972 units, down 3.3 percent from the same month a year earlier."Overseas s

South Korea posted a trade surplus with Japan in the auto parts sector for the first time last year as Japanese carmakers widened sources of imports to lessen risks, industry data showed Monday.According to the data provided by the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency and the Korea International Trade Association, South Korea recorded an auto parts trade surplus of $23.75 million with Japan last year, a turnaround from the previous year's loss of $84.33 million.This represented the first surp

Lee Yun-ok, a 60-year-old owner of a humble coffee shop in Seoul, shudders when recalling a small but painful experience from a car accident.A few years ago, she was pulling her car out from an on-street parking lot after work one evening. She was on a glitzy Gangnam street in the southern part of the city commonly teeming with expensive luxury vehicles like BMWs and Mercedes Benzes.She was going in reverse at a low speed but wasn't aware of a BMW parked at a crossroad nearby. Her car touched th

South Korea's top automaker Hyundai Motor Co. said Monday that accumulated sales of its i10 hatchback broke the two-million mark last year, about seven years after the company first launched the model sold only outside its home market.The record marks the first time for one of its non-Korean region models to get past two million units in sales, according to the carmaker.The five-door city car was first targeted for the Indian auto market in 2007, and nearly 1.89 million units have been sold ther

An improving job market and cheap gasoline is likely to add 200,000 more car sales this year than analysts estimated just two months ago, according to a new survey. After a strong finish to 2014 ― November and December were two of the year’s three best months ― most analysts surveyed by Bloomberg increased their 2015 estimates, raising the average projection to 16.9 million deliveries. As recently as mid-November, the average estimate was for sales to rise about 200,000 to 16.7 million cars and

Pontiac and Toyota vehicles will be called back for more repairs following reports that the air bags could deploy while driving, the U.S. Transportation Department said Saturday. The new recall covers vehicles made in the early 2000s with an electronic component from TRW Automotive Holdings Corp., the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said in a release. The models involved are the Acura MDX, Dodge Viper, Jeep Grand Cherokee, Honda Odyssey, Pontiac Vibe, Toyota Corolla, Toyota Matrix

South Korea's largest carmaker Hyundai Motor Co. and its smaller affiliate Kia Motors Corp. were unable to draw in a larger share of the global auto market in the past three years, data showed Sunday, held back by persistent exchange rate disadvantages that have given an edge to overseas rivals.The car-making duo's combined market share stood at 8.8 percent out of a total 87.17 million vehicles sold worldwide last year, according to the data compiled by U.S.-based research firm LMC Automotive.Al

The presidential office said Tuesday that South Korea would help nurture the country’s southwestern region as a center of automotive start-ups in cooperation with Hyundai Motor Group, the world’s fifth-largest carmaker.Cheong Wa Dae said Hyundai Motor Co. and its smaller sister company Kia Motors Corp. would provide about 1,000 unused patents to those who want to open automotive start-ups in an innovation center in Gwangju.“Hyundai Motor will offer substantial assistance in the whole process of