Word: sonata
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...company's quality improved, but Cosmai wants the Hyundai name to be top of mind when Americans talk new cars. So the company is aiming for a greater swath of the market with seven new or redesigned vehicles, including the Accent ($9,999) and the refreshed 2006 Sonata (some made in Alabama), the firm's standard-bearer sedan. Hyundai is also going upmarket with the 265-h.p. Azera, which will target the Maxima/Avalon crowd in November...
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...
...Sonata offers a lower-priced alternative to Toyota's Camry or Honda's Accord, Hyundai's sales reached 419,000 cars last year, up 360% since 1998. In Europe, sales spurted 21% in 2004. In India, Hyundai's 17% share of the passenger-car market made it the largest foreign automaker in 2004 and the second biggest car company overall behind Maruti, a Suzuki subsidiary. Hyundai is beating competitors by modifying its small cars with ingenious features designed for Indian customers, like elevated rooflines to provide more headroom for turban-wearing motorists...
...short run, Chung's obsession with quality can be costly. Last year, he delayed the launch of a new Sonata in Korea for two months while engineers cleaned up 50 minor defects. In 2003, he asked Lee, the senior R&D executive, to get rid of an annoying noise made by grinding gears in the transmissions of Kia Amanti sedans. Lee worried that he'd have to shut down production entirely to work on the problem. "I told him that we'd lose two months of sales," he recalls. "The chairman said: 'If it's for quality...
...company began offering a 10-year warranty, at the time the best in the industry, to rebuild confidence in its cars. And to compete with bigger brands, Hyundai has loaded up its models with special features that many of its rivals sell only as expensive extras. A 2006 Sonata for the U.S. market will come with six air bags (most competitors offer only four as the standard), a six-speaker CD and MP3 player, and an advanced antilock-braking system?all for less than...