SEOUL, Feb. 18 (Yonhap) - South Korea held last year, its position as the fifth largest car producer in the world, for the eighth consecutive year, after China, the U.S., Japan and Germany.
The country's leading manufacturer, Hyundai Motor Co. and four other manufacturers produced a total of 4.558 million units in 2012, compared to 4,657,000 million vehicles produced in 2011, according to the Association of Automobile Manufacturers of South Koreans (KAMA, according to its acronym in English).
The South Korean production represented 5.4 percent of a total of 84,702,000 units produced in 10 countries worldwide, KAMA said.
Production of Chinese manufacturers and foreigners in China rose 4.6 percent year on year to 19.27 million units, demonstrating that the production car market in the world No 1 is increasing, said the association.
China, where plants are major foreign automakers such as Hyundai, Toyota Motor Co., BMW and General Motors Co., has been holding the lead since 2009, when it overtook Japan to become the world's largest producer.
The second position was assigned to the U.S. with 10.33 million units, followed by Japan with 9.94 million and Germany with 5.65 million.
India was ranked No. 6 in terms of car production, with 4.14 million units, followed by Brazil with 3.34 million units, according to KAMA said.
