Reuters
Automotive News / January 10, 2006 - 3:00 pm

DETROIT -- Toyota Motor Corp. claims to be afraid of a lot of things: complacency, competition, and success itself.

But in the United States, rival Hyundai Motor Co. may well be at the top of Toyota's list.

"We're worried about them," Yukitoshi Funo, chairman of Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. Inc., told reporters in Detroit this week.

"Our main competitors here are essentially Honda Motor Co. Ltd., Nissan Motor Co. Ltd. and Hyundai, but Hyundai is the one we are very carefully watching," he said on the sidelines of the North American International Auto Show here.

South Korea's top automaker, until recently a target of jokes about broken-down parts, has dramatically raised its profile on the world stage with a benchmark study by research firm J.D. Power showing an improvement in quality to match the best Japanese brands.

Hyundai now sells far more cars than Volkswagen AG, Mazda Motor Corp. and Subaru in the United States. It expects sales to rise more than 10 percent this year to over 500,000 units, in an overall market that it reckons will shrink.

In 2005, Hyundai's sales fell 7.7 percent to 418,615 units, giving it a market share of 2.5 percent.

"The quality story is resonating," Bob Cosmai, chief executive officer of Hyundai Motor America, told Reuters at the Detroit show. "We're broadening the depth of our product line, and it's a great value story. When I joined the company at the end of 1990 we sold 90,000 cars, so we're making our presence really known."

Unveiling the remodeled Santa Fe SUV at the show, Cosmai said its popular model would be priced "thousands of dollars" below a comparably equipped Toyota Highlander with six airbags, electronic stability control and other advanced safety features.

As Cosmai admits, Hyundai's path to success has been modeled closely on Toyota's strategy of striving for top quality and competitive prices, and appealing to a broad range of customers with wide-ranging cars.

That's what worries Toyota most.

"Honda and Nissan are also formidable rivals, but they have a distinct business approach and profile from us," Toyota's Funo said. "Hyundai, meanwhile, is essentially doing what we're doing."

But Funo added that Toyota would not and could not compete with Hyundai on prices, and would instead focus on building its brand and value.

"Our costs aren't as low as Hyundai's. We don't want to compete on their terms," he said.

His Hyundai counterpart, meanwhile, seemed to be adopting Toyota's characteristic modesty when asked how the South Korean company stacked up.

"I'm not sure anyone's a big threat to Toyota right now," Cosmai said.

"They're a very successful company," he said, adding that Hyundai benchmarked much of its processes and design characteristics around Toyota. "We have a long way to go."

welcome to the forum :00000732:

thanks for your imput

way to go HYUNDAI :clap: :clap: :clap:

yeah, Hyundai!!!!!

Hyundai rocks!!!!!

I heard that a couple of years ago Hyundai hired an auto engineer that used to work for Toyota. I'm not sure how accurate this information is but it makes sense towards the fact that their quality, and appearance had increased dramatically over the last year and a half. Include this with the warranty and price and there's no doubt that Hyundai will rise to the top in the next few years.

http://www.thetorquereport.com/2007/03/new...undai.html#more

That might have something to do with why they have their eye on Hyundai.

Not unless they stop selling cars with poor suspensions, such as the Azera. Personally, I wouldn't trust that the 2008 is substantially better.
The price and warranty help get your interest, but it may not help sell the cars nor establish owner loyalty.
One of the basic concepts of Automotive marketing is to get the younger, poorer buyer in a car and then move him up in class and price as he/she earns more.
I hope Hyundai is successful because I believe Toyota needs it comeupannce, just as Detroit got theirs years ago.