21-month Low
The Korea Automobile Importers & Distributors Association announced on March 7 that a total of 15,671 imported cars were newly registered in Korea last month, down 3.5% from a month ago to a 21-month low. The cumulative number for the first two months of this year reached 31,905, 13% less than a year earlier.
Mercedes Benz had 3,787 cars newly registered last month, followed by BMW (2,916), Volkswagen (2,196), Audi (984), Ford (749), Land Rover (729), Mini (582) and Toyota (491). By country, 78.6% (12,313 cars) were European while 14.1% (2,217) were Japanese and 7.3% (1,141) were American. By fuel type, diesel accounted for 68.2% (10,685), followed by gasoline (4,321, 27.6%), hybrid (643, 4.1%) and electric (22, 0.1%).
The best selling model of the month was the Volkswagen Tiguan 2.0 TDI Bluemotion with a sales volume of 873. It was followed by the Mercedes Benz E 220 BlueTEC (768) and the Mercedes Benz E 250 BlueTEC 4MATIC (452).
Some experts point out that the decline in the sales of imported cars in Korea is rather a natural phenomenon with the market remaining in the state of saturation. Still, the others say that the sales can be recovered in March as the decline was attributable to less business days and the supply shortage on the part of some of the importers.