It’d still take awhile to overcome their “cheap car” image, but they ARE building things better these days…I dunno.

Who overcomes the “cheap car” image first, the domestics or the Koreans?

It still gonna be a luxury crappy car

Personally, I think luxury brands are a joke for the petty crowd that ponders the social image their cellphones represent, and what not. That being said, if they can crank a few bucks out of these inferiority complex losers, go for it. That Genesis car looks great, and if it replaces or comes in slightly above the Azera, it’s a contender for my next car. Hyundai, like Honda and Toyota, may “have no soul” but their cars have a certain funk in their price range while offering a better value to those of us who buy ‘em and drive ‘em to death.

If you live for a brand name, you are a moron anyway, but BMW and Benz will gladly make you pay for your complex.

Why stop at Lexus? Take on Bentley already! These morons at Hyundai can dream big!!! I’ll give them credit for that.
But what idiot is going to buy this premium luxury brand from Korea?
(And spare the Acura/Lexus/Infiniti talk! It’s from a different country, and we are at a different time in automotive history)

The only moron is you TOZO. I’m guessing your just a child who hasn’t learned that history trully does have a tendency to repeat itself.

Don’t believe me? It’s starting already - We’ve got you as the naysayer….

The Koreans have broken though, the Chinese will be next and it’ll be even faster. You just know 30 years from now when you can get African made cars there will be some snot nose internet brat to tell us..

“But what idiot is going to buy this premium luxury brand from Africa?”

As a fan of the WRX, I’m dissapointed.

They can build as good a car as they want to build.

If it is great, that’ll be good for everyone.

“The Koreans have broken through”……….the cheap korean toilet paper. HA HA HA!

Well said, TOZO. Quality needs to go way up before they even start thinking of branching out in the luxury market.

Remember it takes 5 - 10 years for these new brands to become credible (or longer Mazda / Xedos anyone) So although it feels a little early for Hyundai this is probably good planning.

Hyundai is a premium brand in every way: Price, Quality, Reliability, cutting edge technology etc… Every engine Hyundai offers rivals anything simular produced by volume sellers like GM, Ford, Chrysler, etc… Advocates of Ford, GM, Chrysler are Scared that their market is shrinking and consummers are wising up and tired of buying unreliabile garbage. Hyundai Sales figures are direct undenyable proof that people want what Hyundai Offers. The shrinking GM, Ford, Chrysler market is proof consummers are tired of poor fuel economy, repair shop trips, short warrenty, over priced, under powered, un reliable vehicles with extremely low levels of refinement and class. My Elantra has premium leather only found in High end vehicles, and standard equipment equivalent to totaling thousands for any other company. For myself a guy owning dozens of vehicles Hyundai is by far the top choice. Take a look at the Vera Cruz, Sonata, Azera these vehicles are proof that Hyundai is a premium brand. For the closed minded people out there I can send you a bumper sticker which reads “I bought a POS, please honk when parts fall off”

‘My Elantra has premium leather” ……and no dog in Asia is safe. Kia/Hundai = crappy little beaters.

“I bought a POS, please honk when parts fall off”

Comment by inlinewhine, posted on April2 at 3:03 pm

i will make sure my brothers sisters friends cousins dads grandpa who owns a hyundai gets one.

i wonder what re-sale value would be on a premium hyundai?

I think that too many of the naysayers in this thread are not looking at this objectively. THe Koreans are taking a long term approach (same as the Japanese did) to the auto industry. Toyota proved that time and reliability can overcome perceived cheapness. I remember in the 80’s when the Japanese auto makers said the same thing. Nobody beleived that a Toyota could compete with a Mercedes. It may be better for the domestics to introduce fresh marques that don’t have the history of the current marques. With a new marque it can be defined how the company wants and not by its history of products (See Scion).

Inlinewhine: let’s look at Hyundai’s sales figures & see if they are undeniable proof that people love the Hyundais lately:
Last February: sales up 1% (from one year earlier)
Last January: sales DOWN 8%
Last December: sales DOWN 13%
Last November: DOWN 15%
Last October: up 4%
Last September: DOWN 13%

I’m pretty sure Hyundai is at the top of the JD Power Survery. Not sure what that means, but they are higher than Audi and BMW.

I just sat in a Veracruz this weekend - while it has many premium options, they feel pretty cheap. Hyundai still has a way to go before I’ll consider buying one - but they got me to at least sit in one.

TOZO can you cite your source?

and for the morons who think that hyundai can’t be a player in the automotive industry just take a look at honda/toyota. I bet you were one of those guys who said that the “jap crap” is going to go out of business soon. Look at them now especially with toyota going to take a big bite out of the full size truck segment with its new tundra.

You have to start somewhere, and Hyundai is no slouch player.

LOL @ all the hater comments. Concerning reliability, there are many out there who own 150k+ mile Hyundais and have had zero issues outside of typical maintenance.. I had an Elantra myself, only took it to 37k miles before trading in, but zero problems. I have an 06 Tiburon now, almost 3k miles on it now, and.. whadd’ya know, no issues!

Concerning quality of materials.. if anyone thinks the Hyundai line-up feels cheap.. check out a Chrysler/Dodge/Ford product. Aside from the likes of F-150, those products will truly remind you of what cheap is. GM has improved lately, but the quality of their materials still isn’t quite up there with Toyota/Honda/Hyundai. Oh, and the Elantra leather is actual real leather. Not vinyl or leatherette or pleather type of crap that most other auto manufacturers would use on their small cars, if they even offer “leather” as an option at all.

The only thing I would say Hyundai really needs to improve on is their gas mileage. For four cylinders I should in theory be able to extract at least 25MPG city. It looks like they’ve done that with the Veracruz though.. very tall sixth gear in that one. Turns only ~1700RPM at 75mph.

well u cant compare asian brands to american brands about quality, im sure Hyundai’s are better build and feels more exspensive than Cadillacs

—————->well i drove & raced the SNOT out of a friend’s 2006 Sonata like it was my SRT-4 and she aint had no problems yet……..

Cite my source? Look it up yourselves! It’s fact! All right, here! Some of it can be found in the link below. February was up for Hyundai. But March, we’ll see what happens tomorrow…

http://digiads.com.au/car-news/latest-HYUNDAI%20AND%20KIA%20CORPORATE-news.html

Well said Renton. It’s all about execution and focus. If Hyundai wants to build a premium car they have everything at their disposal to do so. Given the current state of things, it may be more reliable than a Mercedes.

Maybe they should take Land Rover/Jaguar off Ford’s hands.
that way they dont have to worry about creating a whole new brand… and making a name for themselves.

Deantj has it right, anyone who remembers the japanese cars of the 70’s and 80’s knows that they were not the finest examples of quality unless you really loved rust….I mean they litteraly turned into piles of orange and brown dust overnight (I should know I have owned enough and restored enough of them). Don’t base your impressions of Hyundai by looking at the Honda or Toyota you have sitting in the driveway, it took them 20 years to start selling good cars in this country that did not rust away.

Given the state of the competition between the manufacturers right now it’s not too early for Hyundai to start forming another division be it budget or luxury to complement their “finally acceptable” standard lines. If it’s cheaper than an Acura and has similar features (especially in safety), there are always buyers in current and future US economy. Be it cash-strapped buyers or those who can appreciate cars without the brand emblem….

You’re just pissed off that I’m right and their sales have sucked for the past few months.

Having driven assorted rental Elantras, Sonatas and Amantis, I can honestly say they are put together just as well as the Chryslers, Mazdas and Toyotas I have also encountered.. and in some cases, the materials are even nicer. Hyundai has long stated their intentions to move upscale and distinct from Kia, so this Genesis will be a nice first step.. but this is not the car to establish an entirely new brand identity and dealer network for.

Deantj,
Man I’ve gotta say I love the way you lay it down to these slack-holed maggot-munchers. Are you working out the anger of being worked like a bore hole by some jack-hammer cellmate or what? I wonder if what really grips your **** is that you can’t grip yours any more.
.
TOZO - before you get excited, don’t even imagine that I am your friend, you ugly little taker.

Listen Deantj, most of those record sales are from Kia. When Hyundai achieves “record” sales, it means that it sold like 1% more autos than 12 months ago. Automakers do that to put a spin on their numbers, to make them seem better than they really are” just like in those other months where Hyundai sales were down, the title is jus “Hyundai announces October sales” or something. That is downplaying how bad they did for a certain month. Automakers do that so that their stocks don’t plummet. For instance, Hyundai sales were up 0.5% last month, and those are record sales, beating last year’s record by literally a handful of cars.
I’m not saying that Hyundai is about to go belly up. I’m saying that its sales are not as great as inlinewhine made them out to be. Sometimes Hyundai does good and sometimes it does bad, but mostly BAD in the last 6 months. My numbers are accurate. If you just calculate the numbers instead of buying the bull**** headlines that Hyundai wants to fool you into buying, you could learn something.
Deantj, I’m sorry I made you feel bad about your ****ty Elantra. Europerspective can suck your ass to make you feel better.

deantj, I was in total agreement with you until you started spouting your homo-hating and borderline racist commentary. It was not needed at all.

Back on-topic. Tozo, YoverY Hyundai sales are up, and no matter if sales increased a half-percent or 10 percent record sales are record sales. Hyundai isn’t lying to or misleading anyone when they say they posted record sales. And moreover that drop you harp on can be attributed to Hyundai’s steep pull back on fleet sales.

And all you idiots proclaiming Hyundai makes cheap litter beaters really need to step into 2007. These cars wouldn’t be winning awards (Strategic Vision, J.D. Power, etc) if that were the case.

I just have a few comments regarding this issue.

Firstly, this pseudo-luxury Hyundai will NOT steal sales from Merc, BMW, Infiniti, Lexus and the like. I have with me, a Car and Driver Magazine from 1990 comparing the first LS and Q45 to the established competitors of the day. The Q and the LS demolished all of the high priced European competition in ALL performance areas and they were cheaper (more reliable too). This is how Lexus (and Infiniti to a lesser extent) overcame the Europeans.

Now really, I can’t imagine this new Hyundai outperforming ANY high end car, such as a Merc E Class, BMW 5 series or a Lexus GS. It just won’t happen.

However, it may steal sales from the likes of Ford, GM, Chrysler, Toyota and Honda. Overall though, this car NEVER make the impact that Lexus and Infiniti did when they hit the market in 1989.

My first issue with Hyundai is I think they should REALLY concentrate on improving the models they have now to the highest level of quality, performance possible first! If they have extra money, resources now fine, put them into every car that rolls off their assembly line…then just maybe like after Hyundai becomes as commom for quality like Toyota,Honda,Nissan(300-400k mile cars)We may take them seriously. Remember the 89′ Camry v6 Toyota made 1 car at a time Super reliable into Toyota-Lexus today. Hyundai needs to learn the lesson of patience.

Alexr19 wrote: “Back on-topic. Tozo, YoverY Hyundai sales are up, and no matter if sales increased a half-percent or 10 percent record sales are record sales. Hyundai isn’t lying to or misleading anyone when they say they posted record sales. And moreover that drop you harp on can be attributed to Hyundai’s steep pull back on fleet sales.”
I say: Fair enough. Maybe the sales drop is a pull back on fleet sales. If this is so, however, when Ford sales come out, and they are down, we should not panic, but remember the 15,000 Taurus that are no longer on sale and should have gone to fleets. And there was a strike at a plant I remember hearing about. Still, those percentage losses were BIG. Really big. Now, it’s 0.5% (half a percent, not 10%! It’s 200 cars!) up for the month (still down for the year). Careful though: sometimes automakers compare to one year ago on a volume change rate, sometimes on a daily sales rate, and sometimes versus the prior month. Whatever looks good. Mitsubishi is a champion of doing this. This is clearly not “lying” but misleading. It’s fudging numbers, (”misleading” at most) and it’s okay. Impressive rebuttal, alexr19. Good work. Anyway, we’ll see how sales turn out at the end of the year.

That idiot deantj thinks all the investors will look at the sales and calculate them personally one by one. Investors - the good investors - don’t have time for that. They are busy making money. Buuut deanTJ’s is a special child has learning disabilities, and I should ignore him.