Word: sonata
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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...
Hyundai has rapidly built up regard for its products through an almost fanatical attention to getting it right. Consumer Reports magazine recently named the Sonata the most reliable car in the U.S. And Hyundai placed a solid third among nonluxury brands in J.D. Power & Associates' 2005 survey of initial-car quality, beating out Honda. Six years ago, Hyundai ranked among the worst in terms of initial defects. The comeback is "astounding," says Chance Parker, executive director at J.D. Power in Westlake Village, Calif...
...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 senior R&D executive Lee to get rid of an annoying noise that grinding gears were making in the transmissions of Kia Amanti sedans. "I told him that we'd lose two months of sales," Lee recalls. "The chairman said, 'If it's for quality...