Hyundai Motor Co. said Monday that it climbed to the fourth place in the Brazilian auto market in the first six months of this year with more than a 10 percent market share, the highest since the company started running its factory in the country four years ago.

The company successfully expanded its market share in Brazil even though overall demand for cars in the Latin American country remained soft due to the nation’s economic slowdown. Auto sales that reached 3.58 million units in 2013 in the country retreated to 2.48 million units last year. For the first half of this year, 950,000 cars were sold, 25 percent less than the same period a year ago.

Reflecting weak car demand, sales of U.S. carmaker General Motors Co., which held the largest share in the Brazilian car market, slid 22.8 percent in the first half of this year from the same period of last year. Fiat Chrylser Automobiles N.V. and German automaker Volkswagen AG also saw their shipments plunge 39.3 percent and 35.6 percent on year, respectively. Compared to them, Hyundai fared better with its sales dropping a mere 4.5 percent on year.

Hyundai Motor’s outperformance came after its strenuous efforts to meet customer satisfaction, said Lee Yong-woo, the chief of Hyundai Motor’s Brazilian operation. The Korean auto giant’s market share in Brazil jumped to 8 percent last year from 3 percent in 2012 and has remained higher than 10 percent for four straight months since it surpassed 10 percent this March for the first time. The company achieved a double-digit market share just four years after it started running its plant in Brazil.

Lee Yung-sun, chief of Sao Paulo Korea Business Center of Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA), said the company’s localization strategy helped it gain the upper hand over its global rivals.

In particular, the HB20 that was tailored for consumers in Brazil has become its best-selling model in the market. It took only about a month for the car to be chosen as the car of the year since its launch in October 2012.

The Korean automaker made a bolder move to launch the New HB20 last September in Brazil regardless of stagnant demand, which helped boost its market share this year.

By Song Sung-hoon

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