Kia is celebrating two important sales milestones having had a record sales performance for the month of May and for passing half a million registrations since the brand came to the United Kingdom in 1991.

In May, 5,604 Kias were registered - an 8.27 per cent increase on the previous best-ever May in 2012. Total sales for 2013 to date now stand at 30,441 vehicles - a record for the first five months of the year and some 10.6 per cent up from the same time last year. Kia's year-to-date market share stands at 3.21 per cent.

Paul Philpott, president and CEO, Kia Motors (UK) said: "Reaching 500,000 cars in the UK is another important milestone for the Kia brand. Our growth over the last few years has been down to a combination of great new products, changing perceptions of the brand and is testament to the efforts of our growing UK dealer network.

"We predict that we will achieve one million registrations in the UK before the end of the decade and our long-term ambition is to become a ‘Top 5' volume car brand in the UK. Considering that our year-to-date sales equal our entire annual performance from just five years ago I am confident we will get there.”

The first Kia launched in the UK was the Pride in 1991 - Kia's original A-segment car and predecessor to the current Picanto. 1,786 Kia vehicles were registered that year. The 100,000 registration landmark was reached just three years later, in 1994, with the sale of a Rio hatchback and a Sportage crossover was the brand's 250,000th vehicle sale in 2008. The top three best-selling Kias in the UK so far in 2013 are the Sportage, Picanto and Ceed respectively.

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