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The Sportage Was Kia’s Best Selling Car in 2018

January is usually the month when carmakers around the world draw the line on last year’s performances and see whether their investments, plans, and strategies worked towards making for a successful period.
2018 Kia Sportage 1 photo
Photo: Kia
In 2019, the company that opens the floodgates of numbers coming from the auto sector is Kia, which on the second day of the year posted the sales figures for the year that just ended.

The South Koreans say that in 2018 the brand sold a total of 2,812,200 vehicles, including passenger cars, recreational vehicles and commercial ones. That number represents a not so great increase, but an increase nonetheless: 2.4 percent over the numbers posted for 2017.

After punching in all the figures, Kia is confident 2019 will be a good year as well, even better in fact. Hence the company's sales target for the next 12 months has been set at 2.92 million cars, which is about 4 percent more than the figures posted for 2018.

As for the cars that sold the most, the Sportage SUV was the brand’s biggest hit. Globally, the Sportage was shipped to 501,367 new customers last year. Way behind it sits Kia’s Rio (also known as K2 or Pride), which was featured in a total of 355,852 new registrations in 2018.

Completing the podium is the Forte, or K3 compact sedan, which managed to appeal to a total of 328,504 new customers last year.

The target set for 2019 is not out of reach for the South Koreans, as they plan to launch several new or refreshed models on the market in the coming months, either locally or globally, including the recently unveiled third generation Soul, the still-in-the-works Ceed-based crossover or the new Palisade.

Electrification of part of the existing range will also contribute to the projected rise in sales, despite the fact that Kia has not announced any major developments in this field for 2019.
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About the author: Daniel Patrascu
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Daniel loves writing (or so he claims), and he uses this skill to offer readers a "behind the scenes" look at the automotive industry. He also enjoys talking about space exploration and robots, because in his view the only way forward for humanity is away from this planet, in metal bodies.
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