The market share of imported cars in South Korea hit a record high last year due to strong demand for foreign luxury vehicles, industry data showed on Friday.

The number of imported vehicles registered in the country was 260,705 in 2018, up 11.8 percent from the previous year, according to the Korea Automobile Importers & Distributors Association (KAIDA).

It marked the first time that the figure topped 260,000 in the country. The market share of imported passenger cars reached a new high of 16.7 percent last year, surpassing the previous high of 15.5 percent in 2015.

German luxury carmaker Mercedes-Benz ranked the first among foreign rivals, selling a total of 70,798 vehicles here in 2018.

It was followed by German car manufacturer BMW, but its sales tumbled 15.3 percent over the year to 50,524 units due to some of its models that caught fire over their defective components.

Japanese carmaker Toyota came in third with sales of 16,774 vehicles here that was up 43 percent from a year ago.

The best-selling model last year was E300 4MATIC, made by Mercedes-Benz, with the sale of 9,141 units. ES300h of Lexus was the second best model with the sale of 8,803 units.

European carmakers held the market share of 74.5 percent in the local market of imported vehicles in 2018, followed by Japanese automakers with 17.4 percent of market share and U.S. companies with 8.2 percent of share.