"Found On Road Dead" i didn't make that up. I guess if your into Ugly, poorly made cars Ford is for you!
So... what does that make Hyundai? Old Hyundais were cheap because, yes, they were disposable. And almost everything pre-90's is garbage. Half of the 90's+ cars are garbage, and that trend only started going the right way in the late 90's and early 00's.
Old jokes are just that... old jokes. Ford's recent upswing is not as dramatic as Hyundais, but they've been working on their turnaround for years. Ford's European products are still best-sellers in some markets (the Euro-spec Focus and Mondeo, for example), and their Mazda-derived cars (Euro/Asian-spec Ranger, for one... Familia and Demio rebadges) have done well in Asia... though our old Demio/Laser (back in the 80's) rusted faster than you could start the engine... the Lynx/Laser we bought a few years ago is doing fine, and I'm still thinking about buying a secondhand Focus diesel off my Dad by year's end. (insanely good car... much better than the Civic or the Mazda3 in terms of refinement and handling... and none of the other stuff in the compact class even counts after those two...)
Fords nowadays are solid products. The only disconnect is that they're solid products
elsewhere, while Ford of North America, hobbled by production issues, union issues, and tooling costs, was suffering until quite lately. The carmageddon is actually good for them, as it's pushing Americans into smaller cars... cars that they've been trying to give them for years (Contour?), only to suffer rejection... and it's allowing them to restructure production so that they can hopefully build their European cars inside the US more cheaply.
Heck, even their new Expedition is a surprisingly competent product. A far cry from the wallowy, under-braked leviathan of yesteryear. And it actually gets halfway decent mileage for a big V8.
And yeah, Hyundai is pretty serious. The i10 was the most successful car as a result of our scrappage scheme over here.
Because unlike other superminis... it actually feels like a real car, not a tin can.
One friend described it, over a year ago, as being the micro-car BMW would build if they built these sorts of things.
I kind of agree. Apart from the hard plastics and somewhat stiff ride (common in this class), the car drives well, steers well, feels roomy and feels incredibly well screwed together (thumps over bumps instead of klumpfs). It even... gasp... has a nice engine note for a small four-pot.
And it's incredibly cheap. Just over half the price of the Honda Fit 1.5.
I wouldn't count them out as the company to kick Volkswagen off the top spot once they get there. But they're going to have to work their butts off to become a big player in the alternative energy scene if they want to be top dog.
They've got propane-hybrids in the pipeline... propane vehicles in production... regular hybrids... and diesels (the Getz, and now the i30) that have whupped the Prius's butt in economy trials (and one of those trials was in actual London traffic!).
Brother visited the Hyundai corporate center in Korea... he said it was fantastic. Many of the cars on the road there are Hyundais, and their top-of-the-line models are serious business. They tooled him around in the older Equus or Opirus, and he said it was actually quite nice.
I still have a 2001 santa fe, v6, 4wd. Engine is weak and pain to work on. Fuel economy is worse than some of the v8s I've owned. Quality is pretty bad, everything that can rust, rusted within 4 years. One of the few good things is the 4WD, for some reason, it seems the 2001 had a locking diff in the rear? It puts the 4wd in my element to shame.
Yes it's a 2001, but 2000/2001 models were the first of the quality cars they started making. Almost got a 2009 santa fe, unfortunately I had to wait 2-3 months for the non $30+k v6 models to become available.
Too bad you got the first-gen. The second-gen is so much nicer. Don't know about how well the automatic will hold up over time... but the entire car feels pretty darn good.
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You can trace a line of progress through Hyundai's models. Drive examples that were built in the 80's (dreadful), 90's (subpar), early 00's (okay, but not good), mid-00's (good, but not class leading) to the late 00's (Genesis, i10... these are Hyundais?!?... no way!).
And if they manage to stay on the upward spiral, there's no telling how far they'll go.
As long as NoKor doesn't nuke SoKor within the next few months...
Because the coupe doesn't fit in with the rest of their 'eco' line. 👎
