Word: subcompacts
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...most attention was a new one: Hyundai (rhymes with Sunday). Hyundai is the first South Korean company to export cars to the U.S. At the Houston show and at the National Automobile Dealers Association convention in New Orleans, Hyundai last week unveiled its new Excel, a front-wheel-drive subcompact with an enticing base price of $4,995. The company is launching Excel with a $25 million advertising campaign and confidently predicts that it will sell 100,000 vehicles in the U.S. this year. That is not a modest mission: no foreign importer has ever come close to selling that...
...business arena is more alluring to Korean manufacturers than the U.S. auto showroom. Americans bought some 11 million cars last year for $131 billion. Hyundai, whose Pony subcompact is already the best-selling import in Canada, may be able to capitalize indirectly on the lofty reputation of products made in Japan. Says Edward Klein, a Canadian auto dealer who sells the Pony: "People perceive it as a quality car because it comes from the Orient." That perception has some foundation: Japan's Mitsubishi owns 15% of Hyundai and supplies the technology for the Excel's engine and transmission...
...they had picked a 636-acre site just west of the central Illinois cities as the location for Diamond-Star Motors, a new joint venture. So named because Mitsubishi's corporate symbol consists of three diamonds and Chrysler's is a star, Diamond-Star plans to build 180,000 subcompact cars annually, beginning in 1988. Each company is investing about $250 million in the Bloomington-Normal factory, and its output will be split evenly between Chrysler and Mitsubishi dealers. Mitsubishi, though, will handle the day-to- day management of the plant...
Moreover, the end of the strike settles a potentially sticky mess caused by extremely intelligent fans in Saugus, Mass. These diplomats of America's pastime decided that they would take strike matters into their own hands and overturn neighborhood subcompact cars for as long as the strike went on. They got to four cars on the first night of the strike and vowed nine more each night--one for each missed inning--until baseball returned to Fenway Park...
...startled Detroit by deciding first to join them. In addition to importing autos from Japanese manufacturers, Smith has taken the unprecedented step of creating a joint venture with Toyota to build a small car in California. He further shocked the unwary by establishing a separate company to produce the subcompact Saturn, which will bear GM's first new nameplate since the Pontiac was introduced in 1926. Saturns will start rolling off the assembly line in two years...