Hyundai Motor Co., South Korea’s No. 1 automaker, said Thursday that its 2013 sales expanded 7.3 percent from a year earlier despite sluggish global economic conditions.

Hyundai sold a total of 4,721,156 vehicles from January through December, up from 4,401,946 units tallied for the whole of 2012, the company said in a statement made after its regulatory filing.

Its domestic sales dropped 4 percent on-year to 640,865 units, while overseas shipments rose 9.3 percent to 4,080,291 vehicles.

The Avante compact was Hyundai’s best-selling car in 2013 with 93,966 units sold worldwide, followed by the Sonata midsize sedan, whose sales hit 89,400 units.

The Grandeur full-sized sedan, also called the Azera in the United States, ranked third with 88,501 units sold across the world.

The carmaker, which is the flagship of Hyundai Motor Group, South Korea’s second-largest conglomerate and world‘s fifth-largest automaker, said that of all the cars sold abroad, 2,912,133 were made in its overseas plants.

This is an increase of 16.5 percent from the year before. Local production, on the other hand, fell 5.4 percent to 1,168,158 units. (Yonhap News)