Small car sales hit record monthly high in Aug.

SEOUL, Sept. 5 (Yonhap) -- Sales of small cars in South Korea reached a record monthly high in August mainly due to high fuel prices and overall economic uncertainties, industry sources said Monday.
Sources said sales of vehicles categorized as compact cars and below reached 38,698 units last month, accounting for 53.5 percent of the total vehicles sold here, according to the sources.
This is the highest percentage reached by small cars this year, surpassing the 52.9 percent tallied in January when Hyundai Motor Co., the country's largest automaker, launched its new Accent and its sister company Kia Motors Corp. unveiled the Morning city car.
Sales of small-sized cars, which reached an average of 50.4 percent in 2010, dipped below the 50 percent mark from March onwards with a rise in consumer demand for big-sized cars such as Hyundai's new Grandeur but rebounded to 52.3 percent of all cars sold in July.
"The downgrading of the U.S. credit rating raised consumer worries about the general state of the global economy, causing people to consider smaller, more economic cars," a market watcher said. "High oil prices further affected the way people picked cars."
Despite a slight decrease in sales in the second quarter, customers have purchased small-sized cars 50.9 percent of the time so far this year. This is the same level reached in 2009 when the country struggled to cope with the financial crisis triggered by the collapse of Lehman Brothers in the previous year.
Analysts predicted that small car deliveries will get a boost from the release of Kia's new Pride and Hyundai's revamped i30 in the coming months.