SHIJIAZHUANG -- Great Wall Motors, a private Chinese carmaker, Saturday said it outperformed the average growth of the whole industry last year with a 28 percent increase in vehicle sales in terms of units.

The carmaker sold 620,000 sport utility vehicles, sedans and pickup trucks last year, 20,000 more than its target for 2012, said Shang Yugui, a spokesman of Great Wall Motors.

Of the total, the auto maker, headquartered in the city of Baoding in the northern province of Hebei, sold 96,000 vehicles overseas, an annual increase of 16.1 percent.

The company has set a sales target of 700,000 vehicles for the year of 2013, Shang said.

Last year, China's auto industry reported a 4.3 percent increase in sales in terms of units, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said Friday.