Kia Motors has posted its global sales figures of its vehicles from export sales, domestic sales and sales from overseas plants at 217,736 units for September, marking a year-on-year increase of 16.3 per cent.

Kia posted strong double digit year-on-year sales increases in many of its major sales regions – 45.9 per cent in China (46,170 units sold), 20.6 per cent in North America (41,997 units sold) and 20.6 per cent in Europe (47,256 units sold).

September sales in Kia’s home market of Korea grew year-on-year by 4.4 per cent (41,952 units sold) while sales in general markets declined by 2.6 per cent (40,361 units sold).

Cumulatively, through the first nine months of 2011, Kia’s global sales have increased by 18.2 per cent year-on-year to reach 1,827,622 units.

North America has experienced the highest gain to date in 2011 of 35.0 per cent (419,075 units sold) while the remaining regions have all shown strong cumulative year-on-year sales increases: 27.1 per cent in China (321,777 units sold), 18.9 per cent in Europe (349,778 units sold), 9.6 per cent in general markets (369,378 units sold) and 4.4 per cent in Korea (367,614 units sold).

Kia’s best selling model in overseas markets for the month of September was the C-segment Cerato (known as Forte in some markets) with 32,887 units sold.

The Sportage compact CUV was the second best seller with 29,571 units delivered, while the B-segment Rio, Sorento mid-size CUV and Soul urban crossover vehicle followed with 26,392, 19,644 and 14,742 units sold, respectively.

*’General markets’ include the regions of Central and South America, the Caribbean, Asia (excluding China and Korea), the Pacific, Middle East and Africa. ‘Europe’ includes both Western and Eastern European markets. – TradeArabia News Service