By Charles Krome
Well, in Europe anyway. That’s the lowdown from the European Automobile Manufacturer’s Association by way of Automotive News. According to those sources, Hyundai and Kia have combined to ring up 521,369 sales across the pond through October, up 4 percent compared to the same time last year, while Toyota (plus Lexus) saw sales slip 17 percent to finish at 511,754. Unsurprisingly, experts pinned the blame on fallout from the Toyota Recallathon as well as improving quality for the South Koreans.
And although things haven’t swung to the same extremes in the U.S., consider this: Toyota-Lexus had 1,448,589 U.S. sales at this point in 2009, with Hyundai-Kia tallying 634,282 customers, which meant that the South Koreans had sold 43.7 percent of Team Toyota’s total. In 2010, the numbers went 1,456,790 for the Japanese and 752,926 for Hyundai-Kia, with the latter now representing 51.6 percent of the former’s total. Hyundai and Kia obviously still have a ways to go before they catch Toyota and Lexus, but just as obviously, momentum is now on their side as the industry continues to recover. Plus, even assuming Toyota now has its quality issues under control, dealing with them has left the company well behind its Hyundai-Kia competition (among others) in a number of key areas.
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