Word: hyundais
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...same time, Toyota is losing ground in the vehicle-reliability race. Hyundai last year nudged past Toyota (excluding Lexus) in J.D. Power & Associates' initial-quality survey. GM has narrowed the gap with models like the Buick Century. Even the indomitable Camry has slipped, dropping from first place in 2000 to eighth in 2004, as consumers report fewer problems with competing models. (Camry complaints aren't appreciably higher...
...coasts, selling Corollas and Camrys to baby boomers and Lexuses to well-off urbanites. On the West Coast, Toyota's share is 16%, double its share in the Midwest and the South. Yet Toyota can no longer count on that base since boomers are heading for retirement homes and Hyundai and Kia are coming on strong with compelling models at bargain prices...
Chung Mong Koo, chairman of South Korea's Hyundai Motor, carefully scrutinizes a newly designed gearshift lever for the automaker's Sonata sedan while his entire senior management team hovers around, anxiously awaiting his approval. The execs are justifiably edgy. Engineers added a plastic plate beneath the shifter to prevent spilled coffee and other flotsam from falling into the mechanism and gumming it up. It's a minor change, but no one is treating it that way, least of all Chung, a hard-nosed, detail-oriented boss with a penchant for micromanagement. ("He still makes the decision...
...Chung, 67, has spent six years hammering this zero-defects message into the heads of Hyundai's employees?and the result has been one of the most surprising turnabouts in automotive history. A few years ago, Hyundai, South Korea's largest car manufacturer, was a synonym for "shoddy." Seoul was the only place in the world where you were likely to see large numbers of its cars on the street. Today, the company's line of pleasantly stylish, relatively inexpensive and certifiably reliable sedans and sport-utility vehicles is tailgating the industry's best-known brands in several prime markets...
...Perhaps most surprising: in China's hotly contested emerging car market, Hyundai's joint venture with Beijing Automotive sold more cars than any other automaker in the first two months of this year. In fact, with a compounded annual revenue growth of 20% over the past five years, Hyundai has been the world's fastest-growing major automaker since 1999, according to Lehman Bros. Hyundai is "putting pressure on everybody," says Rob Hinchliffe, an auto analyst at UBS. Indeed, even Toyota vice chairman Fujio Cho has acknowledged the blur that is getting bigger in his rearview mirror. "Hyundai has quality...