Quote Of The Day: Hyundai Disses GM Without Even Mentioning GM

“Hyundai Motor Co. and its affiliate Kia Motors Corp. sold a combined 1.1 million vehicles in China last year, becoming the second largest auto seller in Asia’s biggest car market, the companies said yesterday.”

This today in the Korea JoongAng Daily, and in case you’ve never heard of them, they are an associate of the Herald Tribune. Now why should this be a slap in the face of GM?

Well, after relating that Hyundai’s Beijing unit, Beijing Hyundai Motor, sold 700,000 locally manufactured units in China, and that Dongfeng Yueda Kia sold 330,000 units, and that including sales of imported Hyundai and Kia cars, Hyundai Motor Group sold 1.1 million units, Hyundai told the JoongAn that Hyundai is “trailing only Volkswagen Group” in China.

This must certainly be a misunderstanding, no? No, it’s intentional:

“Achieving 9 percent market share and the status of the No. 2 car seller in just the nine years since our 2002 entrance into China is just a miracle,” an official for the two affiliated carmakers told the paper.

Hyundai number 2 and Volkswagen number 1? What about GM? Well, let’s look at the numbers:

• Let’s take Hyundai’s numbers at face value, it’s their cars.
• There are no year-end numbers from Volkswagen or GM yet, so let’s go back to November.
• By November, “VW’s 11-month deliveries in the world’s largest car market advanced 38 percent to 1.82 million vehicles,” Bloomberg had reported. But what about GM?
• GM had announced last month, that “for the first 11 months as a whole, sales by GM and its joint ventures in China were up 32.7 percent on an annual basis to 2,172,395 units.”

And why isn’t that making GM the number one in China? Apparently, Hyundai doesn’t buy into the number and discounts the more than a million Wuling delivery vans that fatten GM China’s numbers.

Or maybe Hyundai got sidetracked by this story: “Shanghai GM has become the first passenger car manufacturer in China to sell 1 million vehicles in a single year.” Released by GM China on December 12. We’ve told you it would confuse everybody.

Be it as it may: Scrappy Hyundai is eating GM’s lunch in the world’s (and GM’s) largest and most dynamic car market, at least in passenger car sales. Who would have thunk that?