Hyundai America has announced record sales numbers for July.
The South Korean automaker saw sales increase 4 percent over July 2011's record high, selling 62,021 units. Year-to-date sales represent a 9.5-percent increase over last year.
The sales high was reached despite an inventory crunch, as a Hyundai executive explained in a statement.
"July was another solid month for Hyundai with surging consumer demand dampened a bit by ongoing shortages of core products like Accent, Elantra, and Sonata. Our 27 day supply of vehicles is lowest of all brands and less than half of industry average inventory levels," said Dave Zuchowski, executive vice president of sales. "This is a challenging situation in this hyper-competitive retail environment, so we are looking forward to August with great anticipation. Relief is definitely on the way with the first shipments of our all-new Santa Fe, built in West Point, Georgia, heading to dealers now and improved availability of recently launched and red hot Veloster Turbo, Elantra GT Elantra Coupe."
Low availability would account for the Santa Fe's drastically lower sales this July (4,619 units) from last July (8,119). Year-to-date sales for the midsize crossover SUV are down to 39,059 units from last year's 42,940. We can expect to see a significant increase in sales of this model in August.
Sales of the Accent should also benefit from increased inventory. The subcompact saw sales decrease to 5,257 units from last July's 6,938, but year-to-date sales outstrip last year's 41,727 to 30,956, indicating a surge in demand.
The biggest increase in sales belonged to the Azera sedan, which was dramatically reworked for the 2012 model year. The model saw a 578-percent increase over last July; though with sales of only 977 for the month and 4,143 for the year-to-date, it is second only to the Equus as Hyundai's lowest selling model (the Equus too has seen increases in both monthly and year-to-date sales).
Second place for biggest monthly sales increase went to the Elantra (including the Elantra Coupe, Elantra GT, and Elantra Touring), which boosted its July sales by 22 percent to 18,512 vehicles. The Tucson saw the next biggest improvement, increasing its sales 17 percent to 4,062.
The Hyundai Veracruz saw higher monthly sales (1,370 to last July's 997), but lower year-to-date sales (the 5,153 units it has sold so far this year are nine less than during the same period last year).
The Genesis has experienced the opposite trend, selling 3,103 units this July to last July's 3,517; but selling 22,085 from January, a significant boost over the 18,971 it had sold this time last year.
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