Sales Jump 13.4% from a Year Ago
Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, sales of imported cars jumped 13.4 percent from a year ago in the January-November period of 2020.
If this trend holds, imported car sales are expected to hit a record high in 2020. The best-selling imported car brand of 2020 was Mercedes-Benz, and the share of German car brands such as BMW and Audi Volkswagen shot up.
Imported car sales totaled 243,440 units in the first 11 months of 2020, said the Korea Automobile Importers and Distributors Association (KAIDA) on Dec. 3. If the trajectory continues, it will break the annual sales record of 260,705 units set in 2018. Imported car sales have increased due to the government's measures such as a cut in individual consumption tax scheduled to last until the end of the year.
Sales in November hit 24,257 units, up 13.1 percent from the previous month and 7.5 percent from the same month a year earlier. It is the largest monthly sales volume in 2020.
In the January-November period, Mercedes-Benz topped the list with 67,333 units in sales. BMW finished second with 52,644 units. In particular, sales of BMW's flagship models surged 34.8 percent from the same period of 2019. Audi’s and Volkswagen's January-November sales, which had slowed since the so-called "dieselgate" scandal, also hit 22,404 and 14,886, respectively. Audi's sales jumped 132.7 percent and Volkswagen's 160.9 percent on year.
Apart from Mercedes-Benz and BMW, Audi and Volkswagen, which had struggled in the aftermath of the dieselgate, also contributed to jacking up the overall market share of German cars. The share of German cars reached 67.5 percent of total sales in 2020, with two of the three newly sold imported cars being German cars. Compared with 59.6 percent during the same period of 2019, German cars’ share climbed by 7.9 percentage points.
In addition, 11,446 Volvo cars, 11,416 Chevrolet cars from GM Korea which joined the association in 2019, and 10,152 Mini cars sold, making the three brands break into the 10,000-unit club. The 10,000-unit club which mean automobile brands with annual sales of more than 10,000 units, are used as one the key indicator of imported car brands’ sales performances. Tesla also sold a total of 11,601 units in the first 11 months of 2020, exceeding 10,000 units although their sales figure was not included in the KAIDA’s data.
The Mercedes-Benz E-Class sold 27,720 units, the highest figure, in the January-November period of 2020, according to a CarIsYou Data Research Institute tally, followed by the BMW 5 Series with 19,185 units, the Volkswagen Tiguan with 11,336 units, the Tesla Model 3 with 10,866 units and the Audi A6 with 10,616 units.