.png){kind=small}
In March 2020, Kia overtook its sibling Hyundai in the Australian market basis the monthly sales volume.
Image Source
Even in Australia; Mar’20 was a muted months due to the Covid19 pandemic and majority of the automakers posted YoY degrowth. Showrooms were open last month; but the footfalls and enquiries for the new cars witnessed a steep decline in March.
Australian Automobile Market is almost 3 to 4 times smaller than the Indian Automobile market in terms of volumes. As per estimates; near to 63,200 cars were sold in Mar’20 across Australia. Australian passenger vehicle market is primarily dominated by cars imported from Asia, Europe and Japan. Majority of the OEMs have ceased production on the Australian soil owing to lower volumes and viability concerns. But; the Japanese & Koreans dominate the car sales in Australia (sounds somewhat similar, right?).
Let’s look at the OEMwise car sales for March 2020 in Australia –
In March’20 – Kia posted a positive YoY growth and ranked fourth outright behind market leader Toyota, Mazda in second and Mitsubishi in third.
Toyota is Australia’s biggest car maker and had a Market Share of ~28% basis Mar’20 volumes.
Kia managed to move ahead of Hyundai by almost 200 units and pushed Hyundai to 5th place.
Hyundai entered the Australian market in 1986 via a private importer. Kia came in 10 years later in 1996. Kia was a distant relative rather than a close rival for its first 20 years in Australia, with Hyundai outselling its sibling by more than three-to-one as recently as six years ago.
Kia Australia however has posted growth for five years in a row, more than doubling sales from 28,000 cars in 2014 to 61,500 in 2019.
The newly launched Kia’s Seltos has a huge waiting period of ~3 months in Australia and has also accelerated Kia’s volumes there. The SUV gained immense popularity after it was promoted in the Australian Open Tennis competition.