The Hyundai and Kia brands aim to sell about 7m vehicles globally next year, up from a projected 6.5m this year, the president of Hyundai Motor has said.

Chung Jin-haeng told Reuters: “We aim to sell about 7m vehicles next year. We expect to reach (the target) should we run our factories at full capacity.”

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He said Hyundai and Kia expected to beat their already upgraded 2011 sales targets of 6.5m vehicles, anticipating sales of up to 6.6m.

With global sales buoyant, analysts are questioning how far the South Korean Group can go beyond 7m without building more new factories.

Domestic sales are also riding high for Hyundai and Kia although competition is intensifying with imports set to break records this year.

Apart from the big four, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen and Audi, newcomers such as Nissan and Jaguar/Land Rover have fuelled the rapid sales growth in Korea and imports could surpass 100,000 units in 2011 for the first time, according to industry sources.

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For the first nine months of the year, import vehicle sales came to 79,694 units. More than 26,500 units were sold per quarter on the average so far this year. Import car sales have jumped over 150% over the past five years from about 40,000 units in 2006.

In March monthly sales for import vehicles hit an all-time high of more than 10,000 units, and that figure was passed again in September and total sales are running 48.5% ahead of 2010.

This year could see foreign carmakers grabbing 10% of Korea’s automobile market, up from just 1% in 2002. European carmakers in particular have been enjoying sales growth since the implementation of the Korea-EU free trade agreement on 1 July.

German and French carmakers posted 27.4% growth between July and September on a year-on-year basis in the Korean market according to data from the Korea Automobile Importers and Distributors Association.

British brands including Jaguar/Land Rover, Rolls-Royce and Bentley sold 1,575 units, up 27%. French companies also saw their sales grow.

Korea currently levies an 8% tariff on European cars but the FTA requires them to be entirely tariff-free by 2016.