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Automotive News & Views Is There Room in the Luxury Market for Hyundai?
4250 messages, Last post on Dec 04, 2009 at 6:46 AM
You are in the Automotive News & Views Forum. Your Hosts are steve_ & claires
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Replying to: backy (Nov 05, 2009 9:56 am) I have never ever said anything bad about Hyundai's current crop of products, quite the opposite actually, but it is folks like you that can somehow construe any critical comments made about how Hyundai is attempting to sell 'luxury' cars as 'bashing'. The inability to make that distinction is what would qualify you as a 'fanboy'.
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Replying to: captain2 (Nov 05, 2009 10:04 am) You have no clue how a model hierarchy works. I don't think you have any idea how the car business works. It almost sounds like you want ideological purity in your car brands and guess what that doesn't work. There needs to be some entry level vehicles for every brand to keep customers introduced to the brand. That is what the 3 series and 1 series are for and that is what the C-Class is for. The customer gets the badge at a more attainable price at a younger age then they would be able to afford a real BMW or Merc or Audi or whatever. You catch the customer young when he is just starting out professionally with the entry level car whatever that is and they get attached to the brand not the model. Why do you think actual model names have gone away from most car brands? The marketing guys have figured out that a model name associates people with that particular model not the brand. By using alpha-numerics to name models people identify and associate with the brand and when they want to trade up they will pick another model in that brand. Hopefully they will pick a larger more profitable one to boot. I have been in the car business a long time and I see it every day. Obviously not every customer works this way but the majority of them do and that is why auto brands do this. Every model needs a model below it to support its sales. The guy buying the 3 series or the guy buying the corolla is supporting the 5 series and Camry sales above him. That model hierarchy works for lux brands, non-lux brands and premium brands. BMW would sell many, many fewer 5 series and 7 series models if they didn't have the 3 series below to introduce people to the brand at a lower price point. This model hierarchy works in reverse too. A guy I know bought his first 7 series in 88 or so when he was fairly young. He was a successful business guy and had deep family money so it wasn't a stretch for him. He liked how the car drove and that it was sporty without being ostentatious. As the years went on though and BMW kept bumping up all their cars in size he liked to stay in that same size range. He replaced his second 7 series with a five series in the late 90s and replaced his second 5 series with a 3 series just two years ago. He wanted to stay in that same size range but still get a BMW that drove the way he liked and get the same quality service he expected. Ideological purity in a car brand gets you Range Rover in the late 80s to mid 90s. Back then Range Rover was a one model brand in the US. there was the Range Rover model only in a couple of different trim levels with two wheelbase options for some years. They never made any money and eventually got scooped up by BMW for a song. BMW didn't do much for Range Rover, they really only bought the company because it was the quickest way to develop their own SUV something BMW had never done before, but they did help establish a model hierarchy in the US. You got the Discovery I in its various trim levels and then the Range Rover in several trim levels. They finished development on the Freelander so that there was a true entry level model that started in the low 20,000 range. The Freelander didn't launch in the US till after Ford owned the company but BMW did prod its development and the development of the new Range Rover which shared some components with the X5. Land Rover struggled of course with reliability problems because BMW did nothing to address those concerns but Ford did. Ford also helped them immensely with marketing and development of new models. Ford got a real model hierarchy established finally by 2005-2007. You had the Freelander that was replaced by the all new LR2. Then came the LR3 larger and more luxurious then the freelander. The Range Rover Sport was next much more luxurious then the LR3 but built on the same platform to save costs and it was a more sporty model. A significant move up the brand hierarchy because it was badged a Range Rover. Finally you had the grand daddy Range Rover sitting atop the model hierarchy. I had customers that went from Freelander when they first bought a Land Rover and luckily got a fairly reliable Freelander. Then they bought a Discovery and later replaced that with a LR3. Some of the customers are in LR3s again now but some are in Range Rover Sports or Range Rovers. They may never have bought the Range Rovers and LR3s if they hadn't' been introduced to all that the brand offered when they bought their Freelanders and Discoveries. Without those entry level models that are a determinant to the luxury brand the brand would have missed out on the highly profitable future sales that the entry level buyer will eventually make. I mentioned that Range Rover/Land Rover in the 80s through the 90s was a perpetual money loser. It lost money for Ford too but starting making money around 2005 and in 2006 made over a billion dollars wold wide for Ford. I think they also made money in 2007 but started struggling like everyone else towards the end of 2007 to 2008.
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Replying to: captain2 (Nov 05, 2009 10:16 am) And we could stick to the topic and not call each other names at all. It's about the cars and the company anyway.  I'm going to cross-post this over in Inconsiderate Drivers (share your stories, etc.) where it really belongs, but I didn't see any other interesting Hyundai news to help get back on track in here. Really bad parking job is really good PR for Hyundai (walletpop.com)
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Replying to: british_rover (Nov 05, 2009 10:37 am) of course, that 'attainability' (easy or hard) is a key element to the luxury car. The Genesis sedan, IMO, is plainly too 'attainable' IMO. It is interesting thought that you would discount things like the entry level BMWs and Mercs from being 'real' examples of the brand, exactly the point I guess I didn't make so well?
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Replying to: captain2 (Nov 05, 2009 11:19 am) Notice the italics around that real. You do know what that means right? Sure a C-Class or a 3 series are Real BMWs. The 1 series is a real BMW too. It should have been smaller and lighter to really harken back to what a 2002 was but it is still a real BMW. You could make an argument that the A4 isn't a real BMW because it shares some components with more plebian VWs but I would disagree. The motor is out front mounted longitudinally and it gets real quattro so it is an Audi. The A3 on the other hand well you could make an legitimate argument that it isn't a real Audi. It shares too much with the Golf. Just go ahead and ignore the rest of my post too. It probably went over your head anyway. Hyundai wants people to associate/identify with the Genesis as a premium sub-brand within the Hyundai group. Land Rover does the same thing with Range Rovers and it works pretty well. |
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Replying to: captain2 (Nov 05, 2009 9:35 am) |
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Replying to: steve_ (Nov 05, 2009 10:38 am) |
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