Imported car sales in South Korea jumped 31.2 percent in February compared with the same period last year, a report by a local trade association said Thursday.
A total of 13,852 new foreign-made cars were sold last month, compared with 10,556 units a year earlier, the Korea Automobile Importers and Distributors Association said.
The on-year gain comes after annual foreign car sales hit a record high of 156,497 units in 2013.
The latest tally, however, showed that compared with January this year when 14,849 foreign cars were sold in the country, numbers fell 6.7 percent.
“Some supply issues and fewer working days caused the modest dip in sales compared with the month before” a KAIDA official said.
The drop in sales compared with January is in contrast to slight gains posted by five local carmakers, such as Hyundai Motor and its sister company Kia Motors. Sales of locally made cars edged up 0.6 percent in February from the month before to 107,004 units. This is also an 8.3 percent increase from the year before.
Market share by imported cars stood at 12.9 percent for last month, down one percentage point from January.
Among imported cars, German luxury brands BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Audi ranked in the top three in terms of sales, followed by Volkswagen and Ford. Japanese carmakers such as Toyota and Nissan came in sixth and seventh, respectively, with Honda ranking No. 10, KAIDA said.
BMW sold 3,154 vehicles overall, with sales of Mercedes-Benz and Audi reaching 2,641 and 2,187 units, respectively. Volkswagen sold 2,104 cars, with numbers for Ford reaching 558 units.
European cars accounted for 82.2 percent of total sales last month, followed by 11.4 percent by Japanese cars and 6.4 percent by U.S. brands.
By engine size, 53.6 percent of all foreign cars bought by local consumers were smaller than 2,000 cubic centimeters, with those ranging between 2,000cc and 3,000cc making up 32.7 percent of the total.
The association added that the best-selling foreign car last month was the diesel-powered BMW 520d with 702 units sold, followed by Volkswagen’s Golf 2.0 TDI with 622 vehicles. (Yonhap)
