Sales report for January 2010: Hyundai manages to increase its overall global sales by more than 50 percent!

The world’s fourth largest automaker, Hyundai Motor Company, has revealed its overall January 2010 sales numbers. The company revealed it recorded a total global sales of 269.841 units, as compared to 179.385 units in January 2009.

In South Korea, where Hyundai holds about 50 percent of the passenger car market, the company increased its sales by 68 percent for a total of 59.774 units. With sales of 15.362 units, the 2011 Hyundai Sonata remained the top selling passenger car in the domestic market, according to the official sales report. Of this figure, 13.928 units were the all-new Sonata model, while the rest of Sonatas sold were previous generation models.

Hyundai has seen a very strong demand form its newly launched models including Sonata sedan and Tucson crossover. It was announced earlier in January, that the number of contracts signed for the new Sonata has already broken the 100.000 orders landmark. The figure equates to more than 1.000 contracts being signed each working day since the vehicle’s October 2009 launch!

In addition to higher domestic sales, Hyundai also experienced growth in overseas sales. According to the company, 66.069 Hyundai cars were exported from Korea, while additional 143.998 units were produced at the automaker’s overseas plants located in the USA, India and Europe. Combined Hyundai overseas sales surpassed the 210.000 units mark in January 2010 - an increase of 45.9 percent compared to a year earlier.

Hyundai’s sister company, Kia Motors, also announced that its sales in January 2010 more than doubled from a year earlier. The second largest automaker in Korea sold a total of 34.007 new cars in the local market, while 129.231 vehicles were shipped to international markets such as USA, Europe, Middle East and others. Overall, Kia’s 2010 January sales more than doubled from previous year.

Other three local automakers, the Renault-Samsung, GM-Daewoo and Ssangyong Motor also saw their sales increase. Renault Samsung, which just recently launched a brand new SM5 sedan - a competitor to Hyundai’s Sonata sedan, reported a sales increase of 65 percent. The company sold 18.676 vehicles last month.

GM Daewoo increased its sales by 22.5 percent pushing up its January 2010 sales to 56.281 units, while sales of troubled carmaker Ssangyong Motor soared to 4.421 units.

Update: 2011 Hyundai Sonata price announced!