No really.

The Sonata name dates back to 1988 (introduced in the U.S. as an ‘89 model), the Elantra dating back to its 1991 debut. The Excel line itself improved tremendously from its dreadful 1985 debut, with the Accent taking its slot since 1995. Given that the new Genesis coupe is a vastly different car than the outgoing Hyundai Tiburon (est. 1996), I’ll take HK’s word for it that it isn’t a true replacement.

Hyundai’s XG350/Azera, Santa Fe, Genesis, Entourage, et al. are all relatively recent segment pursuits and don’t really count. I’ll extend the same pass to the Kia brand, as it was once a competitor–though you can see the same “don’t lose it, improve it” mentality with the Optima sedan and Sportage crossover.

All their (Samsung) products are performance and design-wise at least competitive and in some cases they are the world leader and their pricing reflects that. For instance in LCD televisions, they are a world leader in design. Japanese actually copy their design elements. Technologically their lcd TVs are better than all Japanese TVs except the top Sony models which still have a slight edge but who knows for how long. And their prices for lcds reflect that, in general they are more expensive than competitive TVs including Sony. However unlike Sony they are flexible in their pricing and if they need to they will lower their price to undercut competition on as needed basis.

I expect Hyundai to be in the position of Samsung vis-a-vis Sony (Toyota) within the next 10-15 years.

Ah yes, Daewoo…or, since 10/17/02- GM Daewoo The lone Korean automaker that still lives down to the expectations of Korean quality circa 1989! It’s rather intriguing that Hyundai and Kia have made such progress in their long, uphill battles for credibility. Yet Daewoo, even with or perhaps as a result of their marriage with GM, can’t even approach the refinement and quality of what Hyundai was turning out five or six years ago…

Instead, they build abysmal tin boxes that can’t get out of their own way like the Suzuki Forenza and Reno and Chevrolet Aveo. And we can’t forget the awful Suzuki Verona mid-size (a rebadged Daewoo Leganza with a nose job) which earned the lowest score possible in the 40mph offset frontal impact crash test. The roof buckled, windshield shattered and front seat occupants were mangled! Then again, it’s only engine was a 156hp V6, so even maintaining 40mph would require a heavy foot.

GM nows owns 50.9% of the entity known as GM Daewoo, Suzuki owns 11.2%, SAIC (Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation) owns 9.9% with the remaining percentage owned by Daewoo Motors Creditors Committee (if you recall, Daewoo went belly-up and filed bankruptcy in 2001).

I can’t finish my rant about Daewoo without talking briefly about poor little Suzuki. By selling rebadged Daewoos as their own in the U.S., they’ve completely bastardized their brand. While they were pushing Daewoo-built Renos and Forenzas, the quirky/wonky Suzuki-engineered and Japanese-built Aerio was all but invisible on their lots. It was one of the best cars that nobody bought that I can recall.

Now, they have the SX4 Sport (sedan) and Crossover (AWD 5-door) that are damn good little cars able to hold their own against most competitors…especially when pricing and equipment levels are taken into account. Yet they still have those horrid Daewoos littering their dealerships. And they have a 10yr/100k warranty to honor on those things….I’m imagining that their expectation is that no one could tolerate a Reno or Forenza for the duration of the warranty and the 100k coverage is for the original owner only….Suzuki brand image is probably a notch under Kia at this point….but if I actually decided to buy a new SX4, that definitely works in my favor…

“Hyundai sold Acura Legends in Korea re branded as their own. The cars were shipped in knocked down and built locally. No wonder that Hyundai learned how to make better cars.”

Plain wrong. In fact, the company was Daewoo, the year was 1994 and the car was the Arcadia. That first year they sold 3,446 units of the rebadged Legend but that would be the peak year for sales. With the onset of financial difficulties within Daewoo, the program with Honda lost momentum and eventually ended in 1999.

FYI, Hyundai got its start in the business in 1968 by assembling Ford Cortinas from knock-down kits but quickly set to work developing its own proprietary model, the Pony which premiered in 1975 at the Turin Motor Show. Following the launch of the Pony, Hyundai continued to invest heavily into R&D to maintain its own technology independence and has never looked back.

Unlike the domestics, Hyundai is maintaining high levels of quality even for rentals so that their reputation is ready for their future customers. If you are going to use fleet sales to manage your overflow production, this is the way to do it.

+1

I rented a Sonata in Atlanta about 2 years ago and was favorably impressed – it was like a traditional Buick in all the good ways and few of the bad.

Lets not forget the emphasis they learned to put on good design as well as quality. For the most part current Hyundai products are noticeably better looking than their Japanese competitors, many of which have a very “forced” style to them.

I agree that H-K has done an enormous amount of work on their designs and quality. Now they have to work on their dealerships. In my town the Hyundai dealer is in a small building squeezed between a Chevy and a Saturn dealership. Little showroom space or service area and hardly any parking. If you want to be big time you have to look big time. Having said that they get way more traffic than the nice looking but empty Saturn dealership.

You make a VERY good point! Although I hadn’t really thought about this particular aspect (dealership appearance), I’ve been saying that Hyundai and Kia both have an image problem. Now that they’re building competitive vehicles, this is the last major hurdle standing in the way of even greater success!

Hyundai has made some progress by expanding its product line and building some cars that people actually notice and want! The Elantra, especially the SE, is a lot of compact car for the money. The Sonata is an honest-to-goodness Camry and Accord competitor. Although the Azera is rather understated, after driving a Limited model I am very impressed. I’d be just as happy in an Azera as a Lexus ES 350…even though the Azera fully loaded is within $3k of the Lexus. It’s that good, IMHO. And at least two car mags compared the Veracruz head-to-head with a Lexus RX330 when it was introduced and the Veracruz held it’s own!

Kia hasn’t quite made the strides that Hyundai has, but they’ve made some significant improvements. The Optima is one example, it’s understated but handsome (so was the ‘07 Accord), well-built, and a fantastic value. After test driving one, the quality of interior materials is as good or better than in my Mazda3 or most new Nissans I’ve seen. It’s unfortunate that it only got the hand-me-down 2.7L V6 last seen in the ‘05 Hyundai Sonata. Kia also has the critically acclaimed, but not very well-known, Rondo SUV/crossover. Even Consumer Reports loves these two.

Now Kia is joining Hyundai in building a U.S. production facility…about an hour from where I live, actually. Another way to up the brand image and increase visibility to U.S. consumers.

But the largest Hyundai dealer on this side of town shares a tiny, ugly building with a Subaru franchise…it’s the building that used to be the Mitsubishi dealership 10 or 15 years ago…not pretty. There are a few newly-built Hyundai dealerships and at least on new Kia dealership that are very nice, but a lot more that are more Buy Here-Pay Here than Honda/Toyota in atmosphere. My limited experience at some of these less than inviting dealerships is that the salespersons match the questionable facilities and leave much to be desired!

Those snazzy HUMMER dealerships are going to be on the market any day now…and possibly SATURN not too far down the road….if I worked at Hyundai/Kia Corporate I’d be working with real estate brokers right now!

In the 1950s Austin shipped CKD cars to Japan for Nissan to assemble with the idea that Nissan would build up local content and take over production themselves.

The rumour goes that any local content had to be approved for quality by Austin before it could be used. Because of the then-recent “difficulties” with Japan the Brummies were not averse to rejecting perfectly good components out of hand.

Nissan didn’t give up, they just improved the quality again and again.

So for decades they made cars designed in Korea, without much understanding of international tastes or conditions, and little appreciation for what made the Western car buyer tick (I was at the Frankfurt one, had a session with the top guys there). Things like better brakes, because Euro conditions are high-speed highways with lots of congestion points (high speeds plus regular hard braking), quieter interiors, less busy controls (Euros prefer discrete symbols, Asians prefer more labels), etc etc etc.

It’s only been a few years, but already the differences are telling.

LG, Samsung etc are kicking the arses of Sony, Sharp etc… never mind Philips and their western brethren.

HK will eventually kick the arses of Toyondissan.

The idea was to sell your used chevys to a secondary market like college students and kids getting their first jobs etc. Well we had the cavalier a notoriously bad small car. There was always a blown four cylinder engine lying on our shop floor. We had leaks that were un-fixable in the rag top etc. But the blow was that for the same price as one of our used pieces the customer could drive up the road and get his daughter a new huyndai/Kia (then they were competitors) for the price of one of ours three years old.

Remember, neither our car or the Koreans had great (read Japanese) quality, however the new Korean car had a warranty and ours had whatever the dealer could give (30days). It made our iron sit on the lot and the good money we put in that trade turn bad.

The idea back then was that you couldn’t make money on new cars but used was different. It sure was, anytime we got a used Toyota or Honda (even with 100,000 miles) it was gone in two days, while our domestic brands languished.

I got out, when I saw that GM products for us were not going to make a profit new or used and that was ten years ago. AS tot the bloggers that now the GM stuff is much better, my retort is so is the Korean stuff including their warranty. It’s just like the Japanese model, they get the toe in the door on price and then ratchet up the quality to the point that they can charge (retail) prices.

Yes, I felt that even 10 years ago the Koreans were more dangerous competitors than the Japanese. Worse,it’s not choose your competitor the low price guy or the quality guy, you have both battering you in the US.

My uncle bought the first-gen Acura Legend (hey, Acura, remember when your cars had great names? no, you probably don’t…). Anyway, his current ride is an 07 Sonata. There’s a lesson in here somewhere.

Interesting point that you make! I never thought I’d say this, but I detest the interior AND exterior styling of the ‘08 Accord so much that I’d choose a new Sonata instead….much better looking car!

On a separate note, I completely forgot that Acura used to have actual names rather than generic alpha-numeric nomenclature! =) Integra, Legend, Vigor….the good ole days!

I’ve driven the Hyundai Sonata in both 4- and 6-cylinder versions and the Kia Optima 4-cylinder. I was impressed by all of them, far beyond any expectations I had beforehand. They are impressive cars even at full MSRP, but knowing I can snag one for a lot less sweetens the deal even more!

Each year, the Korean brands are gaining more respect…both from consumers and the automotive press. It may not be too far down the road that 100k powertrain warranties and undercutting prices by $3000 or more won’t be necessary to help sell them!

I went to a Hyundai dealership in South Florida on Saturday with a friend to get the oil changed in her car. She had an appointment. When we get there, they ask about her last name and that she would have to bring her divorce papers in to prove she was the original owner “incase the transmission blows up or something” (his words!) and the warrantee was needed. Mind you, there was nothing wrong with the car, it just needed an oil change.
We sit down in the deserted waiting room and sit there for 50 minutes. Getting annoyed we get up and walk over to the service advisor who we find smoking outside and talking on his cell phone. He asked if we would like the car washed. We said sure and then go sit down. Twenty minutes later we walk over again and as we are standing there he tells another guy who is walking by to find out what is going on with the car. The guy says no, he is busy. Two minutes later that guy walks by again with a trash can. Taking the trash out was more important than checking on a customer’s car. AWESOME. Finally after 75 minutes the car is ready to go.

As I walked out, I was thinking about a Forty Thousand Dollar Genesis customer being treated the same way that they still have a long way to go.

So when we received a letter from our dealer in My 2007 stating we could lease a new Sonata for $211 a month for 2 years, nothing down,and they’d pay the first lease month, we said to ourselves – well, we’ve never leased but let’s try once.

Right now I’m sitting in a northern Canadian rockies B&B and have just driven the Sonata nearly 2700 miles in 11 days, and tomorrow, we make our way home to Michigan, some 2000 miles away. The car has been totally trouble free over the 14,000 miles we’ve put on it in 14 months, and has been totally trouble free on this vacation.

It’s a four cylinder car and we’re seeing as much as 33 mpg on the highway at speeds up to 70 mph. It does 0-60 in under 9 seconds, seats 5 in comfort, has a very good ride, handles well, is quiet enough (I do miss the Alfa like howl of the 2.7 V6 we had previously), and is invisible enough to keep thieves at bay in high theft areas. It also can do something that virtually no competitor can “officially” do, and that is, tow 1500 pounds legally. Toyota Camry = 1000 pound tow rating, for one major competitive example. Yep, we tow our 2007 Clipper pop-up (1440 pounds) with the Sonata (but didn’t on this trip – didn’t want grizzly bears to go “ooooh, yummy, another zip-lock dinner of two tourists!”)

The Sonata is actually rated as a full-sized car, and I jokingly tell friends that it is the perfect “Family” car because it has a 5-body trunk . . .

It’s also MANUFACTURED in Alabama USA, and in fact I was privileged with the opportunity to see cars being built for the first time in my life, at their highly advanced (and how!) plant – ironic since I’m Michigan born and bred and could NOT get into any car plants so drove 2300 miles round trip in January to Alabama. Hey, it WAS 63 degrees when we left the plant (and had to head north back to winter and work).

Solid, fast-improving cars? Without a doubt. The Koreans can build a terrific vehicle…including the folks at what is now GMDAT, who may actually be the best of the bunch, IMO.

Management? Ah, here the plot thickens.

Take a look at the talent they’ve broomed in NA over the past few years….it’s to the point that recruiters won’t touch H/K. Nobody can live up to their lunatic ambitions.

Brand management? Kia is Hyundai is Kia…or is that backward?

Wait for another 18-24 months, when the luxury standalone brand launches…yes, it’s coming. With the ‘mericans banished, who’s to tell them otherwise?

If you go to the auctions, you’ll see where the ‘growth’ in ‘08 numbers is coming from–daily rental. Great values, BTW.

IMO, Toyota and perhaps even a restructured Big 3 have the Koreans covered.

You answered your question. Sales of two companies are considered consolidated if ownership in one exceeds 50%. Renault only owns 34% of Nissan. Yes, as an alliance, they sell more, and it’s fair to see them as one of the Global Big 5. It’s all a matter of hoe you count.