Posted on Tuesday 1 July 2008
Over the past two decades Hyundai has moved from being a manufacturer of cheap poor quality cars to become a serious player in the auto industry with world class cars that equal or better more established brands in reliability, performance and price. One of the most influential executives to spur the turnaround is the company’s chairman Chung Mong-Koo, who stated the now famous claim that Hyundai would eventually be ranked among the world’s top five carmakers.
Hyundai, together with its sister brand Kia, sold a total of 3,961,629 vehicles in 2007, finally earning the fifth place ranking, according to Automotive News. As recently as 1999, when Mong-Koo first took over the company, Hyundai was ranked the 11th biggest carmaker by sales.
Factoring in sales of complete knock-down (CKD) kits, which Hyundai exports to countries like China and India, total sales in 2007 amount to 4,146,743 units, and this year is set to be even bigger with new operations opening in the U.S., South America and Eastern Europe as well as China, India and Russia, plus several exciting models in the pipeline such as the recently revealed Genesis sports coupe (pictured).
2007 Global Sales Rankings:
1 Toyota 9,366,000
2 GM 8,902,252
3 Volkswagen 6,191,618,
4 Ford 5,964,000
5 Hyundai-Kia 3,961,629
6 Honda 3,831,000
7 Nissan 3,675,574
8 PSA/Peugeot 3,428,400
9 Chrysler 2,676,268
10 Fiat 2,620,864
Hyundai has come a long way. They’re evolving into a brand that totally makes sense to buy from for most people. They make safe and reliable cars nowadays, and they’re also becoming pretty stylish.
Motor Authority … great job finding this info!
Even ten years ago their fuel economy was significantly worse than the competition, mostly because their engine designs were always one generation behind. Has this changed in the last decade?
Yeah Roy thats true, there engine design hasn’t changed but neither is the competition.
Most of the others that change their engine design, they usually go for power, which isn’t really selling these days. Especially for lower end cars.
in the end.. they rip off other cars for their inspiration. they’ve been putting out nice and some what original concepts lately but still… every one of their cars looks like the competition.. either a straight copy,… or copying some portions of one car and others from another… even the genesis… which is supposed to be a “new birth” for the company… looks like lexus, bmw, and merc smashed into the same car.
mind you,.. these things are dirt cheap and in the end.. most people want nothing but cheap wheels.
Whats the big deal? Combining Kia and Hyundai in order to have higher total? The rest of other companies stand alone. Kia is kia, Hyundai is Hyundai, why not compare them to other companies one by one. LAME article
if you are a bit more educationally inclined or have the brains to do some search before posting, Lame, you’d realize that GM is composed of a number of car companies or brands. For example, the GM figure includes Cadillac, Buick, Saab, Pontiac, and list goes on.
Therefore a Hyundai-Kia a company who’s owned by a multinational corporation much like GM is just on a lot smaller scale than GM, and being in the top 5 is a huge success for a relatively new company.
Stop making a fool of yourself, and consider yourself LAME for lack of intelligence nor complete ignorance.
is VW Volkswagen on their own or the whole Porsche VAG gang?
There goes Hyundai-Kia hating chris again. Mate go and suck on a shotgun.
I told all my friends that Hyundai will be closer to Honda by the end of this decade in terms of reliability, value, and performance
Chris…there is no such thing as an original design anymore. these days people all want the same sort of thing, reliability, comfort, economy, excitement..Hyundai are delivering on that. The fact that the cars all look generic is not fault of Hyundai as they release what the customer want and try and make it different from whats been released by some other company.
It iwll take a massive switch in car design to get away from the vanilla styled cars we have today…look at what cars looked like in different decades and you can see this changed…
I have to give huge Kudos to Hyundai, and about that LAME post, its sad…one of the reasons I don’t post at LLN because its infested with this kind of thinking.
Hyundai continues being a value brand, but they’ve decided to up their game in all areas, and mind you, that’s not entirely easy to do, its a loooong process and they decided to do it and here they are now. As for being “uninspiriing and a copy” well… I do see resemblance to other models but imitation is a form of flattery, plus, they make it enough of their own styling to not be labeled copycats. The Genesis coupe is a step in a whole new direction for Hyundai, and honestly, I cant see how it will fail. A turbo 4 dirt cheap? Think of just the tuner crowd… even if its not a “commercial success” meaning that it doesnt reap much benefits in terms of money return vs initial spending, its still a great image boost. The only thing they need to ensure is the build quality and for that only time will tell.
hey.. i can hate them for unoriginal designs, when they are as unoriginal as they are. they’ve gotten better, a whole lot better,.. but they are still copying a lot of different cars in many different ways. to call them bland is a lie.. they arent bland cars. toyota has uniquely bland designs. kia has copied designs that arent bland. at least i notice a kia as it goes by.
and dont say that I hate them… I don’t hate them… they’re delivering on what most people want in a car. something cheap. and they do it well. I can complain about styling all I want,.. and i will give them credit where credit is due. but in the end, they’ve got a design team that does nothing but make concept cars that either never see the light of day or are clearly influenced by other products currently on the market. I don’t like that. They’re the no-name of cars. some times no-name products are better than the ones they copy, but in the end, theyre still nothing but copies. can a cover song be better than the original? yes… but it’s still a cover.
dadan; porsche owns a share of VW, not the other way around. even so, including porsche sales in this total would only add another 100k at the most. but if theyre saying VW group, they probably mean vw and their companies, not porsche. and they dont list porsche because porsche doesnt have a majority stake in VW to claim their sales as their own.
So what, Chris. I like CCR’s version of Proud Mary better than any other. It’s a cover. Lots of dresses at Target look similar to expensive designer stuff and similar to each other.
Here’s a bulletin: Companies learn to offer what sells or they don’t have reliable and repeat sales.
Hyundai-Kia is a testament to balance. Figuring out what is achievable in the long and winding list of what customers want and trying to sell it to them.
VW group would include SEAT and Skoda among others…