Foreign carmakers saw their sales of small vehicles with an engine capacity of less than 2.0 liters grow by 65.5 percent on a year-on-year basis.

They sold 25,456 units for the smaller segment vehicles during the first seven months of 2011, compared to 15,379 units for the same period last year.

In contrast, sales of import vehicles with engine capacity between 2.0 and 3.0 liters fell from 21,439 to 19,867 units in the local market.

The trend is attributable to high oil prices and a variety of cheaper models introduced by them to compete with sedans of Korean automakers.

The new models include Mercedes-Benz C200, Audi A4, Toyota Motors’ Prius hybrid and Volkswagen’s CC 2.0TDi.

The ratio of smaller vehicles to the total number of import cars sold is approaching 50 percent, according to the Korean Automobile Importers and Distributors Association.

A year ago, the ratio of small cars to the total import vehicles remained at 26.1 percent.

In terms of prices, sales of imported cars that are relatively low and vehicles between 30 million won ($28,000) and 40 million won took up 25.7 percent of the market, a 5 percentage-point increase from 2009.

Meanwhile, the import market share of cars priced at 50 million won to 70 million won dropped from 30 percent in 2009 to 27.2 percent in 2010 to register the lowest since 2003.

By Kim Yon-se (kys@koreaheraldm.com)