GM has its eyes set on achieving a double-digit market share in South Korea this year, according to GM Korea chief Sergio Rocha. Last year, the company increased sales 7.6 percent to 808,309 units — giving it an 8.9 percent market share. That’s a growth of 0.8 percent compared to 2010 levels. In addition, the company sold 206,167 vehicles in South Korea during the January-March quarter, representing an impressive 30 percent increase from the same time in 2011.
However, Rocha said that ongoing economic troubles in Europe continue to be a concern, since GM Korea exports 30 percent of its production output to European markets. In 2011, the GM subsidiary exported almost 260,000 of the 900,000 vehicles it built to Europe.
The GM Authority Take
Reaching double digits from the current 8.9 percent share shouldn’t be a colossal undertaking, especially given the impactful 30 percent growth during the first quarter of this year. In fact, most of the hard work seems to lie in building the Chevrolet brand in the country — as GM Korea replaced Daewoo with Chevy in South Korea in January 2011. And given that The General’s Korean arm will soon begin exporting vehicles to the U.S. (like the Buick Encore), selling more cars shouldn’t be a problem.
Comments
Are all encores going to be imported!?
As far as we know (and as far as GM told us) — yes. Perhaps eventually they will relocate production to North America.
yes but only if it sells well enough or if they make a gmc version ( i say make it a gmc with granite like styling. then the tall hatch can be a chevy and i’d like that to be called the groove cause that name works for the funky tall hatch market)