Hyundai Motor Group

History

Hyundai Motor Group originally manufactured cars for other brands including Ford, and Mitsubishi, along with their own cars to be sold in their domestic market. These original cars were essentially re-badged Fords and Mitsubishis manufactured by the South Korean company.

Hyundai entered the United States market in 1986 with different Excel models. This same year, Hyundai set a record for selling the most automobiles in its first year of business in the United States compared to any other car brand, a staggering 126,000 vehicles.

Initially well conceived, the Excel provided Hyundai with a bad image, as over time it's faults became apparent. The old Mitsubishi design was just that, old. Also, in efforts to bring the costs down, quality and reliability suffered.

Over time, Hyundai began introducing its own models. The Sonata midsize sedan was Hyundai's first in-house design, though it still featured many Mitsubishi designs and parts, which made its quality suffer tremendously.

As time caught up with the poor reputation of Hyundai in the United States, sales dropped more and more, and dealerships were abandoning franchises. Rather than drop out of the world's largest automotive market, the parent company of Hyundai in 1998 began investing heavily in the quality, design, manufacturing, and long-term research of its vehicles, and added a 10 year or 100,000 mile warranty to its vehicles in the United States. This effort has paid dividends for Hyundai, as over time their quality has become the polar opposite of those original cars to enter the United States. In 2004, Hyundai tied with Honda for initial brand quality in a survey/study from J.D. Power and Associates, for having 102 problems per 100 vehicles. This rating, for the Hyundai and Honda brands, is second in the industry behind Toyota when looking at grouped branding (Toyota would be ranked as Toyota, Lexus, and Scion together; Honda would be ranked as Honda and Acura together), but when looked at without grouped branding, Honda and Hyundai both tie for making the highest quality automobiles in the American market.

Investing has proved to be a good strategy for Hyundai in the United States, as its sales grow faster than any other car brand year over year, with no hint of this changing any time soon.

Despite the fact that Hyundai now makes extremely reliable and high-quality vehicles, like the Sonata which has gone from being a questionable machine at best to being named "Most Reliable Car" in 2005 by Consumer Reports magazine, many still hold to the notion that Hyundais are low quality, "cheap" cars. It would seem, however, that statistics and most consumer would say suggest otherwise.

In 2004, Hyundai Motor America constructed an automobile manufacturing plant in Montgomery, Alabama where its new NF Sonata, and Santa Fe SUV models will be manufactured for the North American market. This is Hyundai's first American plant, and one of the most technologically-advanced plants in the entire world.

See Hyundai Group.

Business

Automobile