World's fastest rising carmaker, Hyundai Motor Company, announced a surprising news about pulling out of the Japanese car market, last Friday. The Korean carmaker decided to stop selling passanger vehicles in Japan due to low sales volumes.
Since 2001 when Hyundai entered the Japanese automarket, the automaker managed to sell only 15.000 new cars. Hyundai sold Grandeur XG, Sonata sedan and Getz subcompact car in Japan. Initial sales were encouraging, but later on, Hyundai experienced falling of new car sales
therefore the decision was made to suspend passenger vehicle sales in the country.
Despite slugish sales in Japan, Hyundai contimue to outperform major car-makers, including Toyota on international markets. According to the statement of Hyundai spokesperson, the company has sold 41 percent more cars in the third quarter of the year compared to a year earlier.
This is a temporary decisison said Hyundai spokesperson and if the Japanese passenger car market improves, Hyundai could resume the sales there. Hyundai sells both, passenger cars and commercial vehicles in Japan and while passenger car sales has been suspended, Hyundai will continue to offer commercials vehicles. It will allocate its resources and focus on commercial vehicles sales.
Hopefully, Hyundai returns to the Japanese market with a better car-selling strategy. Once they return, they should try with a broader range of vehicles and instead of selling mid-sized and large-sized sedan, they should focus on selling compact and sub-compact cars or they could make a step further and offer a range of hybrid cars to tech-savy Japanese consumers.
