Hyundai's i10 hatchback sales top 2 mln

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 there over the last seven years, according to the company. Hyundai's Turkey-based plant later began manufacturing an upgraded edition of the same model in 2013 and has since sold 119,631 units of the hatchback in Europe as well.

Hyundai, together with its sister affiliate Kia Motors Corp., currently has over a dozen lineups that are locally produced and sold within particular regions outside the home market.

The Yuedong compact in China, also known as the Elantra in other markets, was the No. 2 best-seller among such models in terms of cumulative sales, which stood at 1.28 million units last year. Kia's Cee'd hatchback was ranked No. 3, after sales reached 968,848 units in Europe over the past eight years since its release in 2006.

Hyundai and Kia, which share the same roof under the world's fifth-largest auto conglomerate Hyundai Motor Group, have sold a combined 8 million vehicles last year, of which 2.25 million, or about 28 percent, were regionally produced models for overseas, according to company officials. (Yonhap)