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Adrian PatonHyundai-Kia wins Autocar 'Car Company of the Year' award
November 19th 2008 00:30
It's almost that time of the year for annual automotive awards and one of the UK's most respected motoring journals, Autocar, has got the ball rolling for 2008 by naming Hyundai-Kia as its 'Car Company of the Year' at its annual award ceremony in London.
Autocar editor Chas Hallet praised the Korean giant's "mind-blowing" ambition. "When the irrepressible Hyundai-Kia group started talking, just a few years ago, about wanting to become the world's fifth largest car company behind Toyota, GM, Ford and Audi-VW, many of us were sceptical." he said.
"Then the Korean group got serious. They hatched a plan to assemble a European design and engineering team to conceive a range of models for Europe. Boldly, they challenged the VW Golf and Ford Focus head on, building cars that looked as good and worked as well - and offering them with a far longer warranty, just for good measure. They began to acquire a reputation as the Eastern marques that would bring forth bold design concepts, much as Citroen has been doing in Europe, and they built separate factories for Hyundai and Kia in lower-cost Eastern Europe, servicing both operations from handily placed engine and gearbox plants," he added.
"Then the Korean group got serious. They hatched a plan to assemble a European design and engineering team to conceive a range of models for Europe. Boldly, they challenged the VW Golf and Ford Focus head on, building cars that looked as good and worked as well - and offering them with a far longer warranty, just for good measure. They began to acquire a reputation as the Eastern marques that would bring forth bold design concepts, much as Citroen has been doing in Europe, and they built separate factories for Hyundai and Kia in lower-cost Eastern Europe, servicing both operations from handily placed engine and gearbox plants," he added.
The product of a Hyundai takeover in 1998, Hyundai-Kia currently dominates the Korean domestic car market with an 80 per cent share and this year became the world's fifth largest car-maker according to Automotive News in the US.
With plants in North America, China, Europe and other locations including Russia, the Middle East and South East Asia Hyundai-Kia has climbed into the top ranks of the world's biggest car companies in less than 50 years. Both companies began making automobiles in the 1960s and didn't start exporting their products until the 1980s.
[Source: Autocar]
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