According to TTAC’s North Korean correspondent, “Mercedes of various models and age serve as the premium mode of transport for the rich and powerful.” China had to do something. And do they did. A Japanese car (of sorts) competes with German iron in the North Korean motor pool. Read More >

Automakers in the U.S., Europe, and Japan are getting increasingly worried about the Korean Twins, Hyundai and Kia. Both had already outpaced the U.S. and European market last year. Today, Kia announced aggressive plans  for both regions. Read More >

The website for midwives the voice of union activists Labornotes reports that a South Korean Hyundai Motor worker set himself afire Sunday after management refused his request to slow down the line. The 44-year-old unionist, Shin Sung-hun, is in critical condition. According to the site, Shin poured paint thinner over and set fire to himself . Read More >

When we heard from Reuters about GM’s possible plan to shift production from its South Korean former Daewoo plants to Europe, we didn’t think that would be highly appreciated in South Korea.  After duly reporting that there could be a deal afoot to mollify the German and European steelworkers union with jobs taken away from South Korea, we opined: Let’s see what the militant South Korean unions have to say about that.”

We did not have to wait long. The unions in South Korea already threaten war, and when they say war, they mean war. Read More >

When thinking about creating cost efficiencies, moving jobs to Asia usually comes to mind. GM has a different plan to bring profitability back to its hemorrhaging Opel unit. GM is considering bringing Chevrolet production from its Korean plants to Europe. In exchange for delivering jobs, GM expects concessions from the unions that would clear the way for a major cost-cutting operation necessary to stop the bleeding and to save the German patient from otherwise certain death. This is at the heart of a detailed report just filed by Reuters correspondents Christiaan Hetzner in Frankfurt and Ben Klayman in Detroit. Read More >

Hyundai has a new and extremely successful spokesman. He is well-known, he can speak about cars with more authority than a football player. Best of all: He works pro bono. It is Volkswagen’s CEO Martin Winterkorn. With a low-cost video, Winterkorn catapulted Hyundai’s image to formerly unknown heights.

The German magazine Wirtschaftswoche reports that the image of Hyundai took a leap a few days after Martin Winterkorn walked over to the Hyundai stand at the Frankfurt motor show and praised the non-rattling steering column. Read More >

At the beginning of this year, the United Auto Workers pledged that it would launch a campaign to organize the foreign-owned, non-union “transplant” factories in the US, threatening to tar uncooperative automakers as “human right abusers.” The campaign initially lost steam, but the UAW stuck to its pledge, re-iterating on several occasions that it would organize “at least one” transplant factory by the end of 2011. With one month left to accomplish that goal and no signs of progress in sight, the UAW has officially called off that goal. In fact, the UAW now hopes to simply pick an automaker to target by the end of 2011. Spokeswoman Michelle Martin tells Bloomberg

At this point, our hope is to make a decision about who we’re going to target by the end of the year. But obviously, we won’t have the organizing campaign completed by the end of the year.

This is not too surprising, considering the UAW announced last week that it would be focusing on dealership pickets initially rather than factory organizing. And sure enough, the first dealership picket has begun, targeting Hyundai dealerships. And yet, says Martin

This has nothing to do with the domestic organizing campaign. Hyundai is not the target.

Huh? If the UAW is not committing to organizing Hyundai’s assembly workers, why picket Hyundai dealerships?

Read More >

Hyundai, which has a flourishing and fast-growing joint venture with Beijing’s BAIC, is jumping on the bandwagon of fake Chinese brands. Probably not on Hyundai’s own volition, and probably with a lot of gentle urging by the Chinese government which thinks that the answer to China’s cluttered market is brands, brands, and  more brands.

Carnewschina has it that the new brand of the Hyundai/BAIC JV will be called “Shouwang.” Read More >

TTAC readers have suffered through my weird crush on Kia’s Picanto/Morning-based “Tam” for months now, patiently indulging my fascination with a car that’s so niche it won’t even be sold in Europe. But with Kia showing off these production images of what will be known as the Kia Ray, it seems that a lot of what I found so beguiling about this A-segment MPV will make it to production. What we’re looking at is a tiny A-segment micro-van, with the Picanto/Morning‘s 1.0 three-banger or 1.25 liter four. And, as we suspected based on early prototype shots, the car has three standard doors and one mini-slider on the passenger side, confirming that this funky little cube is half Kia Soul, half Hyundai Veloster. At a little over $11k, the Ray will also be a relatively cheap Kia, which is why it’s focused on Asian markets like Korea and China… but it’s probably too small to ever make it to the US or Europe. Scion is probably breathing a small sigh of relief…

The last time we posted a photo of the forthcoming Genesis Coupe facelift, we soon found that Hyundai Motor America staff were quietly informing other blogs that it was a photoshopped fake. I inserted a warning into the post, cursed myself for having been had, and moved on. So, how do I know these pictures are real? Probably because they come from the URL blog.hyundai.com (the leaked (non-press) shots are from Gencoupe.com, and don’t look as though they could possibly be faked). It turns out that Hyundai is showing off the new coupe to either drift fans or ice skating aficionados (Google Translate is hilariously unhelpful with Korean) this Saturday at something called the Chonnam National Yeongam F1 Speed ​​Festival. Hyundai will “officially” show the car to the American market a week later at the LA Auto Show… at the earliest. More likely, Hyundai will continue to pretend that this car doesn’t exist until January, at the Detroit show. And they’d have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for those meddling internets!

[H/T: Our man in Korea, Walter Foreman]

The US-Korean (not quite) free trade agreement will bear fruit, and U.S. cars will be shipped to Korea. The funny part is: Some of the first companies to do so are Japanese. The Nikkei [sub] writes that Toyota will begin exporting cars from the U.S. to South Korea in early November. Read More >

In many ways it was a strange scene. The president of Korea, speaking in a US factory that builds the replacement to a car that was once imported from Korea. The president of the United States, speaking in a factory that can only competitively build subcompact cars because of a government-ordered “innovative labor practices” that unionized workers were not able to ratify. In many ways, both President Obama and President Lee were visiting the graveyard of their ideals. Which is another way of saying, that this meeting symbolizes a new pragmatism.

American workers may not be getting paid what they once were, but they’re building cars at a profit. Korea may not be exporting as many cars to the US, but it’s putting the squeeze on Japan. Professor Kim Seung-jin of Hankuk University sums up the dynamic in the Korea Times, saying

There is no free lunch in the world… Korea should get into the U.S. market prior to Japan and China. The more we delay the less the advantage. You should know that the world is still living off the American market

This deal probably won’t boost US auto exports to Korea in the way Obama is hoping for, but it’s a reminder that US manufacturing is slowly becoming more competitive… and that our market remains an attractive place to do business. Free trade is necessarily a messy business for politicians, and protectionism might have kept Orion’s wages higher or Aveo production in Korea. But by embracing free trade, these two presidents could walk into Orion, live up to the downsides of free trade, and promise a stronger, more sustainable economic future.

It’s been… several months since I last indulged my strange obsession with Kia’s forthcoming funky take on first-gen Scion xB values, known as the TAM. And back then, all I had to share were a few crummy photos. Now, thanks to Youtube user daniel78park, we can see the Tam flying down the Korean freeway in glorious cell-phone-o-vision. And though I’ve always assumed the TAM was just a boxy, city-delivery variant of the Picanto/i10 platform, it seems my weird crush is more than that. Automotive News [sub] reports

Kia has dubbed its EV effort the TAM project. Kia’s first EV will be a small vehicle based on the platform underpinning the Hyundai i10 minicar. The company plans to produce 2,000 units in 2012.

Hold up… is my weird crush electric?
Read More >

Hyundai and Kia are technically separate companies, with Hyundai owning less than 50% of its junior partner. But as the two major divisions of the Hyundai-Kia Motor Group, the two firms share resources and align their strategies through carefully-maintained relationships in the classic Korean chaebol (conglomerate) fashion. Hyundai has long been the senior partner in the relationship, getting the newest technologies and the most expensive new cars. But in both Korea and abroad, Kia is beginning to catch up with its big brother, raising questions about the future shape of its delicate relationship. Together, Hyundai and Kia enjoy a dominant position in Korea, earning 45.2% and 33.2% of the overall Korean market in 2010 (including commercial vehicles).  But if you just look at sedans and SUVs, the Korea Herald reports that their 2010 market share numbers are much closer: 39.6% and 35/7% respectively, and converging

Hyundai Motor Group is focusing on the possibility that Kia will catch up with Hyundai within one year in terms of monthly market share ― for sales of sedans and sport utility vehicles ― domestically for the first time…

The gap for sales of sedans and SUVs have continued to narrow ― 22.9 percentage points in 2007, 17 percentage points in 2008, 15.4 percentage points in 2009 and 3.9 percentage points in 2010.

And this fresh-brewed sibling rivalry isn’t just about Korea: around the world, Kia is catching up. And this shifting relationship is shaking things up at the highest levels of the group’s leadership.

Read More >

Like the Chevrolet Cruze before it, the new Malibu was supposed to debut in Korea (probably as a Daewoo) a good year before it arrived in the US. But a few things have changed in GM’s relationship with its Korean unit, no longer called Daewoo but GM Korea. The Daewoo brand is gone, for one, replaced by the Chevrolet bowtie. And with Bob Lutz’s blessing, GM CEO Dan Akerson pulled forward the US Malibu launch by some six months, which means we should be getting it in the first quarter next year.

And though the possibility of a simultaneous global launch is still out of reach (video of the Korean launch can be found here), this model is a key element in GM’s globalizing effort, replacing not only the US Malibu, but also the Daewoo Tosca (a.k.a Chevy/Holden Epica). We knew GM has way too many architectures across its global lineup, but were you aware that the Tosca/Epica had optional Porsche-designed transverse straight-six engines, in 2.0 and 2.5 liter configurations? Neither did I. But with the new Malibu, it’s straight-up-and-down GM: the Epsilon II platform, with 2.0 or 2.4 Ecotec engines (in Korea, anyway… an all-new 2.5 liter engine is on tap fro the US). We may be quick with the Daewoo jokes, but this new Malibu is doubtless making the automotive world a much smaller, more homogenous place. Welcome to the future… [Hat Tip to our man in Korea, Walter Foreman}