Hyundai is riding high. They’re being thought of in the same vein as Honda in terms of quality, the same as Ford in terms of value and the same as Toyota in terms of reliability. So what could be left for Hyundai to do? They want you to think of them as a …
Yep, they want you think of them as a Detroit Dinosaur.
Pickuptrucks has it that Hyundai wants to venture deep into the pickup segment. As in full size. As in big. As in last vestige of America. (And of that American company called Toyota. But do real guys drive Tundras?) Hyundai recently held research clinics with truck customers in California and Texas to learn more about the truck buying public. They used a Ram 1500 truck with a Hyundai grille and a few other touches. Looking through the one-way mirror, they tried to gauge the reactions of the lab-rats in the clinic.
What makes this story interesting is that Hyundai America doesn’t seem that interested in pickup trucks. “We never say never about future products we might add,” said a spokesperson for Hyundai America, “but pickup trucks are not a high priority for us.”. Well, if they’re not a high priority, then why the clinics? A rogue experiment? According to Pickuptrucks, Hyundai Motors (the Korean parent of Hyundai America) is conducting the vivisection, and could have left Hyundai America in the dark. Wouldn’t be the first time an overseas concern does that. Jeez, Hyundai America can be happy that the parents in Seoul are asking American customers.
So if Hyundai does decide to press on with a serious Hyundai pickup truck, would it mean extra jobs coming into the United States? Maybe, maybe not. Sure, the still is that pesky 25 percent chicken tax, which even Ford hates. Although foreign companies build their trucks in the United States to avoid import tariff, Hyundai may have an out and around here. In 2007, the United States and South Korea signed a free trade agreement. That agreement says that the 25 percent tariff on South Korean built trucks coming to the United States will have chickened-out by 2017. Which means, by then, you could have a South Korean built truck on the US market.
If the above still holds true, the price of that truck will be lower, the quality will be good and the reliability will be high. All Detroit can do is – pray.
Toyota and Nissan have failed to sway the faithful from their full size American built pick-up trucks.
What does Hyundai bring to the table to make them succeed?
If the good ‘ol boys didn’t warm up to Toyota or Nissan full-size trucks, it is hard to see how Hyundai will be any different.
That said, as I have mused before in this forum my current Hyundai is much more robustly-built than the Nissan it replaces. The body structure feels more solid, the undercarriage is better-sealed, and when you poke around you find steel bolts holding bumper covers, fuse boxes and other parts onto the vehicle instead of flimsy plastic clips. If Hyundai was to build a truck this way, it might have a shot at convincing the North American market.
Nothing, so I don’t think any of the Big Three have anything to worry about in this regard.
Since the story even mentions them using a Ram with a Hyundai grill on it for the focus groups, wouldn’t one assume they might be considering selling Rams re-badged as Hyundais. Nissan is in talks with doing this for the next Titan, why couldn’t Hyundai who has a reputation for working with Chrysler do the same. It would help unload extra Rams, and Hyundai would have an extra product to sell. A win win for both.
Here in southern Ontario, where rust rules, 20 year old domestic pick ups are a common sight. Six year old Hyundai’s with extensive rust are just as common.
Hyundai is the “flavor of the month” amongst the “we hate the big three crowd”
Full size “real” truck people are either Ford,Chevy or Ram, fans. They don’t buy into the Hyandai myth.
You mean the GM and Chrysler myth: That these are “real” companies making it on their own?
The thing is, both Hyundai (via Bering) and Toyota (who outright owns Hino) make “real” trucks. And by “real”, I don’t mean half-tons. They are more than capable of playing in this field, should the choose, and they certainly own the “real truck” market in much of the rest of the world.
The “real” truck image that has served the domestics fairly well is a bit of a marketing fallacy. Toyota spun it’s wheels for years with the T100 and seven-eighth’s Tundra for marketing and platform-sharing reasons, but the offerings were nothing if not solid and reliable, especially in an era when many domestic trucks were suffering significant secondary-systems problems**. Meanwhile, the Tacoma effectively owns the midsize (hah!) segment.
The current Tundra is actually a very good truck, perhaps not head-and-shoulders better, but solidly competitive and suffering (like the Ford Flex) for being launched into the maw of a recession. Hyundai, very quietly, fielded a competitive chassis in the Kia Borrego (I kid you not, it’s pretty good!) with similarly poor timing.
The domestic offerings are good, but falling back on the “real truck” mantra is exactly the kind of thing that lost them the large-car market. Toyota and Hyundai are huge companies with large R&D departments, more than a little experience in heavy equipment and, this is important, mountains of cash.
** yes, they had rust problems. Domestic offerings have their own issues, and they haven’t been nearly as forthright about doing anything about them.
Great, “mikey,” you just proved that the domestics could produce decent products twenty years ago in the pickup field. What an accomplishment.
Find the tens of thousands of GM truck owners from the late 1990s-mid-2000s with defective gauge clusters that GM refuses to replace. I’m sure they’ll muse with you about how domestics could make decent trucks twenty years ago.
Hopefully by 2017 the Detroit Two will have improved quality sufficiently to compete.
Comedic gold.
Only Top Gear would dream up a stunt like putting a Nun in a Monster Truck.
If this exercise meant anything, its that hyundai may be considering buying Ram if and when Fiat decides to sell the brand. I’m guessing when rather than if since there’s really no other explanation for the Ram brand to have been spun-off. The biggest problem I see with this plan from hyundai’s point is there largely urban-based dealer network. Ranchers and farmers aren’t going to drive a hundred miles to buy and service their pickups.
Full disclosure: I like Hyundai. Having said that, nuts to this. The best thing for them to do – if they wanted to sell a truck – would be to (say it with me) sell a Ranger size (or smaller) pick-up with a diesel.
+1
Seems like the time is right for small trucks to make a comeback. Why follow the pack?
Hyundai had an opportunity to build mid-sized diesel or V6 pickups, based upon their on-frame SUV architecture (now discontinued) as also did Kia, with a different on-frame SUV architecture, but neither took the plunge (probably just as well).
However; now that Hyundai are gaining so much traction, the powers that be in South Korea are probably saying “OK, what’s next?”
1) Looking at the map of foreclosures across the USA, with massive “red” (bad) areas in California, the Great Lakes area, Florida and the East Coast (probably not coincidentally the same areas that were pro-Obama and voted same) – in contrast, it may be seen that the financially healthiest areas include the midwest, mountain west and south – all “pickup truck country”.
2) Realizing that Chrysler/Dodge/Jeep/Ram dealers as well as many GM dealers are dying on the vine, and yet are spread throughout the midwest, mountain west and south – and if the better of these dealers are going to be added to Hyundai’s network, they’ll “need” a truck line.
3) Realizing that Hyundai already know how to build trucks for the rest of the world, and can take the lessons learned by Toyota, Nissan and Honda to heart before plunging into the cold pickup waters….
4) Finally, the realization that Chrysler’s impending bankruptcy and death (c’mon, let’s be truthful here) may allow Hyundai to buy up the pickup factory, dies, designs and rights for a proverbial song (and that said trucks were just re-done) as well as a US-centric “brand” name (of sorts) ” Ram ” (how dumb but, whatever)…
With all of that, I can see why Hyundai may be considering such a move.
They are therefore placing themselves in the camp of optimists towards (parts of) the United States’ future and it would seem, they therefore plan to continue their trends of developing vehicles specific to each market that they manufacture in (i.e. they have development and design studios in Europe for Euro-centric cars, as well as design studios in California).
Let’s look up poll results of 10 years ago in which folks were asked if Hyundai could ever make a serious debt in mainstream cars, near-luxury cars, sporty couples, C segment…
Wait, no one asked, there was no poll. It would have been silly, since Hyundai had no chance.
Now Toyota and GM and Honda are looking over their shoulders.
I say heck yes with Hyundai and trucks. Pickups used to be cheaper than cars 30 years ago. Now they are a lot more expensive.
Time for an entrant willing to demolish that margin for the sake of market share. The buying public can only benefit from such competition.
Trucks with a much lower price tag and a much better warranty? With quality parity or superiority within a generation or two? Bring it on.
If they are talking about a Ranger or smaller truck then go for it. Full-Size trucks, forget about it. They are just going to get stomped on by the domestics just like Honda, Nissan, and Toyota have.
Sadly, Ronin, if Hyundai were to do this AND buy the “Ram” pickup design at the bankruptcy sale, I suspect they’d end up with the Mexican truck plant instead of the US truck plant.
Several reasons: The Hemi V8 engine facility is in Mexico. Most pickups are V8’s, with a smaller proportion Cummins diesel (so only the fewer engines would need to be shipped to the final assembly plant, not the majority).
Costs are obviously lower there than in the UAW factory in the states (which Hyundai would obviously be intelligent enough to avoid like the plague that it is).
Hyundai would probably be able to turn a profit even while undercutting the actual bought for price of GM and Ford pickups by 20% (as a guess), and considerably lower than Toyota.
The trucks would probably be “Hyundai-ized” for this generation, then all-new in the next (probably within 5 years).
The alternate scenario would be for Hyundai to build their own Mexican plant and develop their own pickup.
Ask Nissan and Honda how well the pickup part of that worked out for them, though…
A full size pickup would not be good move for Hyundai as it’s a both stagnant and hotly contested market. But a small entry level pickup the size of a Ford Ranger might be a different proposition.
Koreans are doggedly persistent and by now they can make good cars. I don’t see what’s going to stop them from making good trucks. It may take a longish while but they will succeed.
Carguy, I was just having a conversation with a car-guy buddy of mine in his garage while he was pinstriping my new car.
He says his (highly customized but mechanically stock) 2WD S-10 pickup only gets about 12 miles per gallon, and that more modern full-sized pickups do better. He says that given the typical American habit of wanting to take family AND “stuff” along in the four door pickups of today, mid-sized or “small-ish” trucks don’t make any sense at all for most Americans.
Then, too, look at sales of GM’s Colorado and Canyon twins (awful) as well as the Dodge (whoops – “Ram”) Dakota. Also awful.
Hyundai has some chance, especially if they can do a 1/2 ton diesel rig with 4 doors, plenty of room, optional AWD and plenty of towing moxy. But even so, most buyers go for V8’s (which Hyundai has proven they can build well).
There’s also highly prosperous Western Canada, and Australia – where the vehicles would more than likely also sell well.
Should be enough to keep one factory busy (and with V6’s shared with the current Genesis, and even V8’s from the Genesis, it seems logical that it’d help keep costs down – unless the Hemi V8 were manufactured, which obviously would involve Fiat giving up rights to the design or at least selling rebadged trucks to Hyundai at the outset).
Kind of like what Honda did when they bought Isuzu SUV’s before developing their own.
I’m betting the bigger reason for the failure of “mini” truck sales is that they aren’t that much cheaper than full size trucks. By the time you get done wheeling and dealing you can probably drive home in a Silverado for the same price as a Colorado. And the measly 3 mpg (EPA) difference isn’t enough to sway anybody.
Now if somebody offered a modern, inexpensive, 4 cyl pickup – say Hyndai using their new direct inject 4 – then we might have a game changer. Perfect car for Dad to commute in and do his HomeDepot runs on the weekend.
No way around it – the S10 had some of the most offensive engines produced in the past half century by GM. While the Buick 3.8L was winning awards into its third decade of production, the related 4.3 was failing at 50,000 miles due to bad head gaskets. The four-cylinder wasn’t much better. But if he’s getting 12 mpg in a vehicle of that size and weight, no matter the questionable engineering behind its development, it’s the condition of the vehicle and not the actual technology.
I had a ’92 regular cab S-10 long bed with the 2.8 V6 and 5 speed manual. I consistently got 24-25 mpg on the highway. Once I got 26+. It already had 114,000 miles on it when I bought it. When I sold it (still running) it had 229,000 miles.
I think this is positively HYSTERICAL.
Ya’d have to be a FOOL to look at the Hyundai version of a Dodge pickup.. and figure out the styling isn’t theirs.
Everything Hyundai does.. is milquetoast. Their styling is boring.–(The design for the current Sonata and all other sedan – 3box vehicles that COME from it style wise, cost wise and aspirational ladderwise… come from being in the aero tunnels.) They just don’t draw the lines on the paper to be that LOW.
In theory.. the Sonata design THEORY is cohesive.. and its only natural (in this day and age to see aerodynamics as the natural fluid form of any vehicle.) — Forget styling efforts and design in the past 20yrs in this instance, moot point.
Their SUVs / CUVs are more of a styling effort. The Borrego is a failure.. being late to the party. The rest is trying not to do any faux pas that their competition does.. paired with the cheapo Korean price. (Which DOESN’T surprise me at all.. that PRICE is the biggest kicker. Forget the vehicle itself…) Which violates everything I personally believe in. Find the vehicle ya want, then at the PRICE ya want.. then work down from there.
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Back on topic..
I can tell.. virtually any vehicle.. from ANY OTHER in the past 10yrs.. without the badges or any markings.. by how the design of the cars has matured.
Its a crock of shit.. to try and pull that over on a focus group. Are people that easily fooled?!– (Brings up very negative badge engineering comments from virtually EVERY automaker.)
I’d love to find a pic of this crock of crap. But seriously.. Look at the Linc Mark LT.. ya cant tell me that not a Ford F-150 loaded underneath?! C’mon.. I’m not stupid.
But damn..
I’d love to go to one of these..
Now as far as the whole truck market psychology goes.. this is really getting tired:
Ford and GM have had the MOST variation.. (with the MOST direct competition, until the Ford ad guy comes in and offers a competing “brand”.. some Ford/GM guy HE is) which I’m sure brings in the customers.
Chrysler only exists for DOMESTIC cost.
Toyota.. has been at this crazy game.. for coming in 2 decades.. and THEY HAVE YET to conquer it. Look at their current issues for the reasoning.
Nissan tried to do the same thing.. figuring if ya can be “bothered” to buy “Japanese”.. maybe I can impress ya to buy this.
Forget Honda.. moot point.
But seriously..
Who thought a Hyundai badged Dodge is going to fool anyone.
Not me.. I know better.