• June 28, 2010

The trend in automotive brand one-upmanship this year favoring Hyundai and Ford seems to be continuing as both automakers had a "significant" increase in share of market interest on Kelley Blue Book (KBB.com) in May.

The online auto market and research site says the top five climbers in autos were Hyundai, Ford, GMC, Kia and Subaru. The top five decliners were Toyota, Honda, Pontiac, Dodge and Lexus.

Hyundai's share of new-car shopper activity has increased 70% from May 2009 to May 2010, and the brand now holds 6% of the total new-car shopping activity on kbb.com (up from just 4.6% in January 2010). KBB says the interest is being driven by the Sonata and Tucson models. The company is running its largest campaign to date to support Sonata.

Kelley Blue Book says Ford accounted for 10% of all new-car shopper activity on its site in May, driven by interest in the brand's Super Duty trucks, the Mustang, and the new Fiesta subcompact.

The site says Kia's share of new-car shopper activity increased 38% and the brand currently ranks 13th out of 37 on kbb.com. The brand's Sorento and Forte models were the key drivers.