South Korea’s largest and second-largest automakers Hyundai Motor Co. and Kia Motors Corp. faced with growing competition from imports and productivity challenges are rapidly losing dominance on the home turf as well as global rank.

According to the automotive industry Sunday, Hyundai Motor and its sister company Kia Motors commanded a combined market share of 62.1 percent at home in September, lowest monthly share since the launch of Hyundai Motor Group in 2000. They are estimated to have done no better in October.

The country’s No.2 conglomerate Hyundai Motor Group that once dominated the local auto market with near 80 percent share first saw its local share fall below a 70-percent threshold to 69.3 percent in 2014. Ever since then, Hyundai Motor and Kia Motors have failed to recover their share above 70 percent, except for January this year.

Their new and face-lift cars failed to impress local customers that have wider and cheaper of choices imported brands.

Hyundai pins hopes on its new Grandeur slated for release next month while Kia eyes the budget market with its new Morning to be launched early next year.

Unlike the two struggling auto giants, their minor local peers - GM Korea Co., Ssangyong Motor Co. and Renault Samsung Motors Co. - have been making big strides. GM Korea kept up more than 10 percent share for the last three months, while Renault Samsung Motors pushed up its share to 7.2 percent in September in its best performance in five years. Ssangyong Motor also kept up its share above 6 percent for two months since August.

The three automakers together made up 24.3 percent of the country’s September auto market, the largest since August of 2007. Their combined share for the full year is expected to exceed 20 percent for the first time since 2010 at year-end.

In contrast to the Hyundai and Kia fall, new cars of minor makers were well met.

GM Korea’s Malibu and Renault Samsung Motor’s SM6 became so popular that they helped boost overall sales of domestic mid-sized cars by 16 percent on year. Renault Samsung’s new sport utility vehicle QM6 sold more than 10,000 units in the first 26 days since its debut.

Hyundai and Kia are doing poorer on the global front as well. According to Bloomberg, among 17 automakers that are listed in the global top 500 companies, Hyundai ranked 13th with a market capitalization of $27 billion as of Friday. Taking Kia’s market capitalization of $14.5 billion won into account, the two automakers came 9th with 41.5 billion won tailing behind Japan’s Nissan Motor Co.

On Monday, Hyundai Motor fell 0.36 percent, or 500 won ($0.44), to 140,000 won from the previous session, and Kia Motors dropped 1.09 percent, or 450 won, to 40,700 won.

By Park Chang-young and Ahn Jeong-hoon

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