Hyundai Motors Gains Rave Reviews in the Press

"World Press Can't Get Enough of Hyundai"
Article from Chosun Ilbo 5-29=2005

There appears to be no end to Hyundai Motor’s string of rave reviews in the overseas press. This month alone, the Financial Times, Forbes, Time and the Wall Street Journal have praised the company to the skies, focusing on how it made the great leap to becoming a global carmaker.
The Wall Street Journal wrote Friday that Hyundai was aggressively expanding its position in the North American market, the world's biggest, and threatening U.S. carmakers like GM, mired in a management crisis, and Ford. It said its rise was even threatening Toyota, which is renowned for its quality control management. It said the success was all the more striking since U.S. consumers were avoiding Hyundai cars due to their poor quality only a few years ago. Hyundai's first quarter net profits rose by 14 percent, mainly on overseas sales.

Quality management measures such as a 100,000 mile warranty helped Hyundai shake the shoddy image of its past. In a poll by JD Power and Associates, Hyundai Motor finished second in a tie with Honda in terms of product quality. Consumer Reports also gave Hyundai a good review. The company sold 418,615 vehicles in the U.S. last year, four times what it sold in 1998, and continues to cruise. Its March sales were up 13 percent over the same period last year, while the market shares of Toyota, Honda and Ford fell during the same period.

On April 13, the Financial Times said CEO Chung Mong-koo’s quality control management helped Hyundai shed its reputation as a maker of cheap cars and become a top global player. Five days later, Forbes wrote Hyundai's ambitious path was making the Big Three U.S. carmakers nervous and reorganizing the global auto industry.

The latest Asian edition of Time magazine gave Hyundai a four-page special feature that lavished praise on the company. It said the company's strategy of expanding its overseas markets massively boosted sales in the U.S. and Europe. Since 1999, the company showed the fastest growth of any automaker in the world, rising to No. 1 in the competitive Chinese market in just two years, it said. Time credited the company with “the most startling turnaround in world automotive history.”