Word: hyundais
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...time to reconsider. Since 1999, the Hyundai Motor Corp. and its subsidiary, Kia Motors, have racked up sales increases of an astonishing 70%. In June, when the Big Three U.S. automakers saw their collective sales shrink 4%, Hyundai's rose 37%. The stylish new Santa Fe SUV is in such demand that there's up to a two-month wait for delivery. Both the Santa Fe and the Toyota Corolla-sized Elantra recently won top marks for front-end crash results from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, beating rivals like Toyota's RAV 4 and Ford's Escape. Consumer...
...Hyundai and Kia are defying a tradition that has put all their compatriots out of business except Daewoo, which is sputtering. As Korea lurched toward democracy and full-scale industrialization in the late 1980s, labor unrest worsened quality problems in carmaking and other industries. The Asian financial crisis struck another blow in 1997. Kia (then independent) went bust, to be absorbed by Hyundai. Daewoo, Korea's second largest automaker, filed for bankruptcy last year with estimated debts of $17 billion. Its fate now depends largely on whether General Motors can negotiate a takeover...
...Hyundai fought its way back from the brink with a combination of Korean determination and American ingenuity. As labor woes subsided in the '90s, the company's managers started plowing money into manufacturing technology. Hyundai invested in design centers in California, Michigan, Germany and Japan. And, like other big automakers, Hyundai began to integrate its suppliers into the manufacturing process, which drove down costs--and mistakes. Last year Hyundai Motor all but cut ties to its eponymic parent, Korea's largest industrial conglomerate, which like many of its counterparts is mired in a web of debt and bad investments...
...wasn't until Finbarr O'Neill came along that Hyundai started hitting on all cylinders. An unassuming New York City attorney who took over the company's U.S. operations in 1998, O'Neill walked into the top job the same year sales reached their nadir. "We knew our quality was better and styling was improving," he recalls. "But nobody was showing up." So O'Neill and Hyundai's dealers (those who were left) offered the industry's first 10-year, 100,000-mile warranty, called the Hyundai Challenge...
...even offbeat styling of a couple of new models. The compact Santa Fe SUV was designed in the company's California studio to "cut through the clutter" of look-alike products, says O'Neill. The new XG300, a luxury sedan that at $25,000 is the most expensive car Hyundai has ever offered, also has a distinctive appearance...