Why Korean Cars Are Cool Now #blogpost
Hyundai Motor Company will turn 50 on December, and its hard to believe how far the Koreans have come. They started making good looking, well built and reliable cars in the last 10 years but recently is where things got interesting.
Hyundai Motor Company will turn 50 on December, and its hard to believe how far the Koreans have come. They started making good looking, well built and reliable cars in the last 10 years but recently is where things got interesting.
Korean cars have never been appealing for car enthusiasts until now. This is why I think Korean cars are cool now.
Cars for Enthusiasts
In order to change Hyundai’s brand image a new performance sub-brand was announced alongside a WRC campaign in order to help developing better road cars. 4 years after the N brand was born, the first high performance Hyundai came to life.
The Volkswagen Golf GTI was the benchmark for this car. Hooned at the Nurburgring, 275HP, Limited Slip Diferential, Launch Control, Rev Matching, 6 speed manual transmission. Sounds good. 2 new N performance cars are expected to debut next year, one is a high performance Veloster and a Fiesta ST rival based on the i20.
Kia revealed the Stinger GT sport sedan, the benchmark this time was the Audi S5 sportback. Like Hyundai, Kia spent a lot of time tuning this car at the Nurburgring to make sure the Stinger drives as well as it looks. The top of the range Stinger features a 3.3 Twin Turbo V6 producing 365 hp and 376 lb.-ft. of torque, Brembo brakes, with RWD as standard or AWD as an option.
The most recent addition to these “emotional” Korean cars is the Genesis G70, Genesis is now a separate marque from Hyundai and the G70 is their 3-series rival. The G70 is based on the same platform as the Stinger therefore they share engines, however the G70 is shorter, lighter and more agile than the Stinger. With the same 3.3Twin Turbo V6 the G70 goes from 0-100km/h in just 4.5 seconds.
All these cars and future performance cars are benefit from Hyundai’s Technical Center at the Nurburgring and the knowledge from Albert Biermann (former BMW M chief engineer).
Also Hyundai has said that they will stick with manual transmissions for their performance cars.
Motorsport
It’s not easy to make fast and fun cars to drive from scratch, that’s why Hyundai announced a WRC program back in 2012 to collect knowledge and technology to apply on their road cars.
But not only rally, Hyundai debuted this year at circuit racing, using the i30N as base car for their new TCR project. Hyundai has committed to motorsport in order to develop more fun to drive road cars.
That’s the end, some things that are unseen about Korean cars and that I wanted to stand out. I do think these automakers deserve more respect from car enthusiasts.
Comments
My inner GTI purist couldnt handle the part about the GTI. The manual never has launch control nor does it have rev matching..
Of course manual transmissions have launch control and rev matching, well at least the i30 N does.
KDM da bomb
K D M
k-pop intesifies
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Nice try? Where are you from?
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what? sorry? why?
I’ve said that for over a year now. The Koreans are overtaking the Japanese. Here in Germany Hyundai already sells more cars than every Japanese brand does and not because they are cheaper, but because they offer more for the money and are just as reliable. And with Hyundai/Kia now turning towards the enthusiast market too, the Japanese manufacturers will have a hard time, at least here in Europe.
Was saying this for years as well. Mitsu ditched Evo in favour of SUVs, Toyota has nothing exciting left in production apart from the aging GT86 and Nissan only has outdated 370Z and R35. Yet they are trying to be more “premium” and keep pushing the prices up with their “stylish” and boring SUVs.
In the meantime, Hyundai launched a performance and a luxury brand, developed a new hot hatch (something only Honda is still doing in Japan), Kia released the Stinger GT and there are more to come.
Have no idea what to hate about Korean manufacturers, honestly.
Keep in mind that they’ve achieved this level in a fraction of the timescale compared to the Japanese.
“Just as reliable”!, I think people are all too quick to compare the last 5 years of Korean cars against the decades of Japanese cars in the market. I think a good reputation should be earned of decades worth of examples. When we have many reliable 15 year old Kia’s with over 200,000 miles on the clock than we can give a more accurate analysis but intill then its more just guessing. I gentleman where I work owns a 5 year old Hyundai and its rotting and the key snapped in the ignition but that’s only one example.
The big thing holding KDM back is reputation. The last 10 years has seen them starting to get competitive in the “cool car” market, but they’re still nowhere near the best choice in their category/price range. Not enough to overcome their reputation. Cadillac used to be boring, but they started a new reputation by coming out with some VERY cool cars like the CTS V that destroyed the competition and was built around a legendary “LS” engine. KDM doesn’t have any legendary cars or any cars that stand out ahead of their competition. If they want to turn things around, they need something that will actually BEAT it’s competition, not just compete
The CTS-V is not popular at all. It’s great in reviews, but it hardly dents M5 sales.
This is basically how Japanese cars became popular in the 1990s. Go into Motorsport, release some performance models and watch the cash flow on in.
I knew Korean cars would get the “cool car” status once I drove (and then owned) a Kia Pro_Cee’d GT. It had all the right ingredients, it was just missing the brand image.
I know, changing brand image is their biggest challenge right now.
I will say this, I do like the new Kia Logo I have been seeing around lately, looks great
Hyundai makes a great v8 too.
What car is it in? I was not aware of this, and want to know a lot more..
How about long term quality?
Kias come with a 7 year warranty here in germany. So if they dont want to pay millions for repair they better make them reliable
I’m glad someone brought that up
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