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Hyundai-Kia Now World's Fifth Largest Automaker

If anyone wants to see a brand that's on the move, look no further than

Hyundai has targeted the budget car market for Europe and Asia with the Indian-built i10. (Photo: Hyundai)

the Hyundai-Kia Automotive Group. Now that all figures internationally have been reported for automakers' sales, the Koreans have made a staggering jump forwards in their pursuit to be a top-ranked automaker.

One year before the new millennium, Hyundai-Kia's chairman Mong-Koo Chung, predicted the brand would climb up the rankings ladder and crack the top five. According to the data collected by Automotive News, the automaker has emerged from 2007 as the fifth largest automaker in the world, in less than a decade. Steadily, the brand progressed from 11th spot in 1999 to 5th spot this year, surpassing Honda by selling 130,000 more units this year than the Japanese automaker. Excluding knock-down kits which are vehicles assembled by other automakers by partners across the world, Hyundai sold 3,961,629 vehicles; including those "kit" cars, the number elevates to 4,146,743 units.

Kia has made huge progress with its cee'd compact car lineup; it's helped to elevate their status as a brand. (Photo: Kia)

"We are extremely proud of having achieved this goal in such a short period of time," said Ik-Hwan Kim, current Vice-Chairman and CEO of Kia Motors. "We have been stressing the value of our products over the last few years and our efforts have not gone unnoticed by the public or the industry, neither quantitatively or qualitatively. As a top global automaker, we are set to move in new directions with continuous improvements in quality, design, eco-friendliness and brand innovation for years to come."

To make the jump from fifth place to fourth place will prove to be a difficult task for the brand. The world's fourth largest automaker, as it currently stands, is Ford, which sold an additional two million units over what Hyundai-Kia sold. Nevertheless, as the Hyundai and Kia brands expand into emerging but important car markets such as Russia, India and China, delivering their high quality, low price formula, sales figures are poised to grow.

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