Hyundai-Kia overtakes Ford in sales
Kia Motors has announced that parent company, Hyundai-Kia Automotive Group, has become the fourth largest global automotive manufacturer, beating out Ford for the spot.
Based on figures from the Automotive News Data Center, the Korean manufacturer has overtaken Ford which saw it’s sales fall by more than 30% in the first half of 2009, selling 8,000 more vehicles than the US giant in the first half of 2009.
Results for all of last year saw Hyundai-Kia trail Ford by around 1,000,000-units, but by reducing the impact of the global recession by producing the right product for the right times, the group has managed to take fourth place much quicker than had been predicted.
Go back just 10 years and the newly unified company was in 11th place overall, but rapid globalization has seen state of the art factories being built in several countries including Slovakia, the United States and China. The manufacturing facilities have been geared-up to build products that are designed and engineered for local markets. The Kia cee’d is a leading example, being designed, developed and engineered in Germany and built in Slovakia.
