It's a grand journalism tradition. Start researching one story and stumble upon another. That's how I discovered (via the Wall Street Journal online that Hyundai had two of the top 7 selling sedans in the United States in May with the Sonata at #4 and the Elantra at #7.
It was also fascinating to read over at Autoblog that Hyundai/Kia sales came within 1000 units of knocking off Toyota for the month of May and beat Honda. Hyundai/Kia combined had 107,000 sales (approximately) to 108,000 for Toyota and only 90,000 for Honda. That's a pretty massive smackdown.
Hyundai on its own has not been able to catch Nissan yet but even that's a bit of an apples to oranges comparison because Nissan sales figures include its wide line of Infiniti vehicles while Hyundai just sells Hyundais. Also, Nissan does sell pickup trucks, while Hyundai doesn't.
Take out the roughly 6500 vehicles that Nissan sells that Hyundai doesn't and the Japanese manufacturer has about 63,000 in May sales vs. Hyundai's 59,000 in May sales. That puts Hyundai within about 6 points of catching Nissan, whose monthly sales were down 9 percent overall while Hyundai's were up about 20 percent.
Let's say Hyundai has yet another record month. June could be when it happens that Hyundai finally catches Nissan. But you're likely to see some strong incentives before that happens.
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