The company has now got three dealerships in Chennai taking the numbers to 19 across the state and 71 for the southern region. Promoted by Muthu Palaniappan, the new dealership was spread across a built-up area of 33,000 sq ft (showroom plus workshop) and has a capacity to showcase the entire range of Hyundai cars.

HMIL CEO and managing director H W Park said the new dealership and workshop of V3 Hyundai was very much required to support the expansion plans which the company has for southern region. He said the company has ended 2009 by garnering cumulative sales of 5.59 lakh units.

After posting a record sales in January and February 2010 they kept the momentum going in March as well and reached a new high with sales of 31,501 units in the domestic market registering 27.3 per cent growth over March last year, he said.

Park mentioned that they crossed another milestone recently with a cumulative export of 10 lakh cars when they loaded their i20 hatchbacks to Australia from the Chennai port.

The company has plans to enter 10 new export markets like Russia, New Zealand and Vietnam later this year and also intend to strengthen their dealership network from 289 operational units to around 320, he said.

They were likely to roll out another SUV by the end of this year and were targeting 5.6 lakh units this year, said Park.