QOTD: How Do You Manage the North American Hyundai-Genesis-Kia Triumvirate?

Corey Lewis
by Corey Lewis

Yesterday, TTAC covered news of the launch of a second-generation K900 model in the United States at the upcoming New York International Auto Show and Mobility Conference. Upon considering the K900 and its potential for success, some questions arose about the three different badges on offer from the Hyundai-Kia conglomerate, and what we might do with them.

Where does Hyundai go from here?

This question of branding was spurred on and expanded by a tweet from an Internet Person, who suggested Kia needed a luxury brand with which to offer high-end models like the K900 and Stinger — a Genesis of its own. That would leave Hyundai-Kia with four brands on North American shores, all vying for their own slices of the sales pie. Does a fourth marque make sense? Would Kia have better success with a separate luxury brand?

Or are three brands just the right amount? One might argue that luxury offerings from Genesis allow Hyundai to venture into the higher end of the market, picking up sales it would otherwise miss, utilizing luxury entries which have their main established sales base in South Korea. The Kia brand is then free to offer different, alternative-type vehicles (Stinger, Soul), albeit without the same level of clout as Genesis. This doesn’t seem like a long-term answer, for both market expansion and volume reasons.

Perhaps a culling is in order. All offerings from Hyundai, Genesis, and Kia are variants of the same thing — a body style here and a platform there, utilizing the same components across brands. The argument could be made for some kind of a merger, Datsun-Nissan style. All Hyundai and standard Kia vehicles are merged into Hyundai. The remaining Genesis lineup receives any formerly Kia vehicles which are over a certain price point. Consolidate dealers, make the product offerings simpler, save Hyundai money at the end of the day. Any enthusiasts of Kia quickly convert to Hyundai enthusiasm.

Expansion, continuation, or contraction: which is best for Hyundai-Genesis-Kia?

[Image: Kia/Genesis]

Corey Lewis
Corey Lewis

Interested in lots of cars and their various historical contexts. Started writing articles for TTAC in late 2016, when my first posts were QOTDs. From there I started a few new series like Rare Rides, Buy/Drive/Burn, Abandoned History, and most recently Rare Rides Icons. Operating from a home base in Cincinnati, Ohio, a relative auto journalist dead zone. Many of my articles are prompted by something I'll see on social media that sparks my interest and causes me to research. Finding articles and information from the early days of the internet and beyond that covers the little details lost to time: trim packages, color and wheel choices, interior fabrics. Beyond those, I'm fascinated by automotive industry experiments, both failures and successes. Lately I've taken an interest in AI, and generating "what if" type images for car models long dead. Reincarnating a modern Toyota Paseo, Lincoln Mark IX, or Isuzu Trooper through a text prompt is fun. Fun to post them on Twitter too, and watch people overreact. To that end, the social media I use most is Twitter, @CoreyLewis86. I also contribute pieces for Forbes Wheels and Forbes Home.

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  • Akear Akear on Mar 22, 2018

    Ford is concentrating on SUVs and Trucks because they can no longer compete with nimble companies like KIA. It did not take long for the Korean automakers to surpass Detroit.

  • Veeg Veeg on Mar 22, 2018

    This is easy. Hyundai is Chevy. Focus on the CUVs and basic cars. They're for people who don't care about cars. Kia is Pontiac. Still a Chevy but a little more flavor. Focus on the Soul - it sells and is pretty much the only car out of Korea with any flavor at all. Genesis is Cadillac. Need to get the Escalade on line quickly or it's never gonna work.

  • Wolfwagen Is it me or have auto shows just turned to meh? To me, there isn't much excitement anymore. it's like we have hit a second malaise era. Every new vehicle is some cookie-cutter CUV. No cutting-edge designs. No talk of any great powertrains, or technological achievements. It's sort of expected with the push to EVs but there is no news on that front either. No new battery tech, no new charging tech. Nothing.
  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
  • Oberkanone Where is the value here? Magna is assembling the vehicles. The IP is not novel. Just buy the IP at bankruptcy stage for next to nothing.
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