It’s easy to make a great $300,000 car. It’s much harder to make a great $30,000 car. Hyundai just unveiled the 2024 Hyundai Santa Fe and it’s another reminder of how quickly the Korean automaker has radically transformed from a builder of mediocre cheap cars to a designer of great affordable ones. It’s Hyundai’s world, we’re just living in it.
On top of that, we’re going to look at how another automaker (from Romania!) is killing it, how the Range Rover maintains its popularity, and how a group of retired cops and firefighters from Detroit forced Tesla directors to cough up three-quarters of a billion dollars.
The Secret To (Hyundai’s) Success
One of the things you learn as a journalist after driving hundreds of cars at different price points is that there are two big ways to make a car better. Hyundai (inclusive of Genesis and Kia) is excellent at both.
As cliché as it might sound, the first and easiest step is good design. While nailing the design of a car takes time, once that cost is front-loaded and accounted for the great design lasts as long as the car does. Adrian, a car designer by trade, touched on this in his Kia Picanto review:
Selling cars to the terminally stingy is always a limiting strategy – by their very nature they don’t buy cars that often. Recognizing this Kia wanted to jazz their range up a bit to expand their customer base; in 2006 they hired in professional funky glasses wearer and ex-Audi chief crayon wielder Peter Schreyer (also a graduate of the Royal College of Art, like me) to be their new head of design. He introduced the ‘tiger nose’ as a visual brand identifier and has since ushered in a range of reasonably handsome, consistently designed vehicles that have helped the Hyundai/Kia megacorp to become by volume one of the five largest car companies in the world.
It wasn’t just Schreyer. The great Luc Donckerwolke, formerly of Volkswagen Group fame, came over in 2015 and helped continue the radical transition from meh to good to great.
The last few years have just been an unparalleled run of super interesting products and concepts, from the striking Hyundai Ioniq 6 to the wild Hyundai Vision 74 Concept. These are not the bland copies of European/Japanese designs the Koreans were known for, but unique designs that stand alone, even as they reference older vehicles.
It’s why the new, butch Santa Fe and some other cars have elicited tweets like these:
Every time I see pics of the new Hyundai Santa Fe I feel dirtier and dirtier for liking it. I feel shame for loving how the Ioniq looks, but loving how TWO Hyundais look? Is that even allowed for me?
— Andrea Petersen (@Neondancer) July 18, 2023
As a child of the ’80s, it’s hard to process the fact that Hyundai are making some of the coolest cars in the world now pic.twitter.com/pI6dKyIyjs
— 𝔻𝕒𝕟𝕚𝕖𝕝 𝔹𝕖𝕧𝕚𝕤 (@denialvibes) July 17, 2023
Hyundai’s design bravery here is incredible. Zero references to past (successful) generations in a class of SUVs known for iterative, safe designs like CR-V and RAV4.
— Chris Paukert (@CPAutoScribe) July 17, 2023
I think this looks utterly fantastic, but it won’t be for everyone and I’m sure Hyundai is 100% okay with that. https://t.co/eUCM4hbxa7
Design will only get you so far, of course. The other side of the coin is that there are plenty of expensive cars that drive poorly, actually. I’ll have a review of one soon enough. And there are a few cheap cars that feel great.
Hyundai and Kia products, for a long time, felt extremely “meh” to drive. The steering feel was never right. Even when they tried to make a sports car in the Hyundai Genesis Coupe it was just always slightly off in a way that was hard to ignore.
Then Hyundai brought over Albert Biermann, the German engineer who helped make BMW M what it became. I remember the first time I drove the Veloster N. It was a revelation. Road & Track rightly named it the Performance Car of the Year. Then followed the Elantra N, the Genesis G70, the Kia Stinger, and a seemingly never-ending stream of good cars.
The Elantra N is a prime example of a car that’s maybe never going to be an insane volume seller but manages to be a great car that can be had for around $34,000.
If there’s a third aspect that makes the larger company successful, as evidenced by what you see above, it’s a melding of different business philosophies and cultures in ways the Japanese have been increasingly unsuccessful at (see Renault-Nissan.) Even the Germans, in my experience, tend to have a difficult time ceding control to regional units (DaimlerChrysler being a famous example of this, but it’s everywhere.)
This is a deep cut, but Hyundai Motor America’s CEO and President Jose Muñoz Barcelo–a nuclear physicist by trade–spoke to UC Berkeley’s California Management Review last year and gave some good insight into what’s going on (you’ll have to try and ignore the annoying academic business-speak):
One of Jose Munoz’s big discoveries at Hyundai was the lack of planning and concomitant “lack of alignment and integration amongst various business units.” When organizations get large, there is often a plethora of semiautonomous business units to integrate. CEO Hank Greenberg at AIG had over 100 (Hyundai Motor Company had scores). It’s often challenging to achieve alignment, since such units are often semiautonomous, yet they are often cospecialized and are codependent on other units. Alignment doesn’t happen naturally. It needs to be engineered, and Munoz did exactly that.
[…]
It took a Spaniard Jose Munoz to convince the Hyundai leadership in Korea that greater localization was necessary to achieve success. Localization has different meanings to different people: to Jose Munoz it meant basically a “less Korean-centric” approach. “Take the best from Korea and blend it with the best from America… whether its technology or management practices.” This also meant expanding the production footprint in America, something Munoz had championed.
Hyundai isn’t perfect and it’s having to deal with the challenges created by its poor labor practices and the Inflation Reduction Act, but it’s been aggressive in setting up an infrastructure in North America to support its EV expansion plans.
It’ll be interesting to see if buyers embrace the 2024 Santa Fe when it comes to market, because that design is really something but it may not be for everyone.
Renault’s Dacia Is Killing It Because People Still Need Cheap Cars
I’m a big Dacia fan. The Romanian offshoot of Renault is another company that’s good at making extremely cheap but still attractive cars, from the back-shelf-of-the-bargain-basement Dacia Sandero to the almost-good-enough-to-be-upstairs Dacia Duster crossover.
It turns out, while everything else is getting expensive, there’s still a place for affordable cars. Per Reuters:
Dacia, which boasts best-sellers such as the Sandero and is expanding its range of electric vehicles (EVs), sold 345,432 vehicles between January and June, the Dacia unit said in a statement.
That compares to 277,885 units in the same period of 2022, which was heavily impacted by COVID-19 and component shortages.
Dacia’s four main models all recorded growth in the first six months of the year, with sales of the hybrid Jogger model growing by 130% and accounting for over one in four customer orders.
Hell yeah, cheap hybrids. I love it. A Dacia Jogger is a weird little seven-seater that costs about $30,000 and delivers more than 50 mpg (on the admittedly more generous European cycle.)
Retired Detroit Police And Firefighters Force Tesla Directors To Give Back $735 Million In Stock Options
Man, that’s a fun subhead to write. While Elon Musk seems to have mostly skated on a lot of his recent legal troubles, the compensation-related issues do seem to be harder for Tesla to deal with as evidenced by the company settling a lawsuit from 2020 brought forth by the Police and Fire Retirement System of the City of Detroit.
Here’s the wrap-up from Bloomberg via MSN:
The directors — including Oracle Corp. founder Larry Ellison; James Murdoch, son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch; and Musk’s brother, Kimbal Musk — agreed to hand over the stock grants and cash for already exercised options, along with making corporate-governance changes to the way board-level compensation issues are reviewed, according to court filings.
The Tesla directors denied wrongdoing as part of the accord, but said they agreed to settle the case “to eliminate the uncertainty, risk, burden, and expense of further litigation,” according to the July 14 filing in Delaware Chancery Court.
In this kind of case, the money doesn’t go back to investors directly. Instead, it goes back to the company. As Bloomberg points out, this isn’t the end of it:
The settlement comes as McCormick also is expected to rule in another case filed by a Tesla shareholder over a $55 billion executive-compensation plan for Elon Musk. The suit says that the approval of the pay package, the largest in US corporate history, was marred by conflicts of interest and improper disclosures about performance benchmarks.
::Grabs popcorn::
No One Is More Model Loyal Than Land Rover Range Rover Fans
I had to clarify in the subhead that Land Rover Range Rover buyers are model loyal because, well, I am not qualified to speak to any other loyalties. Still, it’s kind of impressive how many buyers of the big SUV immediately come back and buy the exact same vehicle. Global intelligence firm S&P Mobility has the numbers in their latest mini-report:
The Land Rover Range Rover led all models with a 41.1% cumulative year-to-date model loyalty rate through April, for models with more than 350 return-to-market households, according to S&P Global Mobility analysis. That gave it a narrow edge over the Ford F-Series full-size pickup line at 41.0% and the Tesla Model Y at 40.0%. The industry average year-to-date model loyalty rate was 25.1% through April.
Since Range Rover is a relatively low-volume vehicle, metrics such as loyalty can swing more sharply than those of a huge seller like F-Series, said Tom Libby, associate director for loyalty solutions and industry analysis at S&P Global Mobility. Still, there are plenty of lower-volume vehicles that do not attract this sort of model-line loyalty when they are redesigned.
The Range Rover loyalty rate helped hoist parent Land Rover brand loyalty to 38.9% year-to-date – a 9.5 percentage-point increase year-over-year. For reference, Tesla led luxury brands with 68.0 percent loyalty.
There are many great, big SUVs, but if you want a Range Rover it’s true that there’s nothing really quite exactly like a Range Rover. (Editor’s Note: I tend to think the Mercedes S-Class and Range Rover are among the very, very best cars in the world whenever they’re released. Say what you want about JLR these days, but there’s no going wrong with their big SUV if you can afford one. -PG)
The Big Question
Kind of off-topic today. We’re obviously doing a big membership drive, and with the introduction of the Cloth Tier we want to add more member-only posts. Our sort of guiding principle is that any member-only post is additive and doesn’t fall under regular coverage (i.e., we wouldn’t paywall a review or news). Here are the questions:
For Non-Members: What would you be upset to be put behind the Member Wall?
For Members: What are more post types you’d like to see? What kind of behind-the-scenes info do you want?
Test
Allow everyone to post media.. mostly pictures and gifs.
Remove ads for the membership people.
or maybe that happens already. I’m not a member yet so I don’t know.
I’ll be interested to find out how excited Jason is about the Santa Fe’s taillights. Personally, I’m kind of dying for them, and want to see them applied to a sedan or coupe. STAT.
Velour Member here. I’m happy with the amount of content behind the pay wall, and I think if you put much more back there you might ruin the good thing we have going. Someone else said how suprised they were that the good vibes have kept going since the start of this site, and they’re right. So many sites devolve into constant arguments, I’m really thankful that hasn’t happened here.
FYI, I come here for Torch, DT’s bad wrenching ideas, Adrian, Bishop, Showdown & Morning Dump. I make sure to click and at least skim each article even if I’m not totally into it.
Also, I like the ideas below for Member’s Only swag (please, please make an Autopian Member’s Only jacket! [https://membersonly.com/collections/mens-members-only-jackets]) and a Donate button.
There are so few arguments because engagement between commenters isn’t great. I rarely if ever am able to get into a good back-and-forth with someone, which is one of the few things I miss about the old site. I guess part of the problem is posts don’t default to having reply notifications on, so I’m guessing most people never know about replies they’ve gotten. I also can’t figure out how to find comment history.
Edit: I finally clicked on the tiny button that let me change some of those settings and see my comment history!
I’ve yet to figure out how to see who’s “liked” a post. You just get a smiley face count of internet points.
I dunno, I feel like the likes are better kept anonoymous like on Reddit and other reader-contribution heavy websites. That said, the lack of comment notifications is a drag. Let’s hope this feature can be added soon!
That’s a decent point. At the least, make the button remember your previous choice so you don’t have to remember to hit it every time.
I signed up very early just because Autopian was fresh air after this longtime reader witnessed the slow motion J-nik train wreck. I like to support people and content that I enjoy because there should be more good stuff and people in the world. I don’t care if you put anything behind a paywall or send me swag. Just pay your people well, do good work, have fun, and bring us along for the ride.
As an aside, I am floored that you have managed to find such good unknown (to me) and freelance talent to write interesting stories. Every one of the non-regulars seems like a terrific person I would love to drink beer and fix Fiats with.
Members only events are great. Lets do more of those.
100% paywall doesn’t matter. I sub’d to support a group of writers I liked that had the gumption to take a risk.
They’ve done a great job and I don’t plan on canceling regardless of what they do with the paywall. I don’t even realize things are paywalled until someone mentions it in the comments.
I don’t know what the “membership” solution is. I subscribe to a couple of MSM sites, a couple of tech sites. Otherwise, if I like a site I may throw a few bucks at it occasionally. Though this is one of the few places that are whitelisted to my ad-blocker and I even click on ads occasionally just to goose the numbers (this can be a little strange when my VPN locates me in places like Iceland, Singapore, or Bulgaria).
I read DT & Torch at the old site and followed them here. Autoopian has great writers, even the few who aren’t certifiably strange. I’m probably not as auto-centered as a lot of readers (my ’15 Soul should last another decade if it doesn’t get stolen again, and the engine doesn’t turn into a solid block of GDI carbon) and don’t drive for fun (living in a city does not encourage that).
What I’m not interested in: Discord, videos (if I wanted videos I’d hang out on Youtube), podcasts (I come for the text, not to sit through video that takes far longer to watch than it would to read). New car reviews unless there’s something particularly intriguing (I’ll probably never buy a new car again). Serious wrenching (too old and fat, and cars haven’t been the same since they became computers with wheels). Offroading. So put all that stuff behind the paywall 🙂
Membership <sigh>. I subscribed for a while until i became cash-flow-zero. I liked the tales from the slack. You can put all the RV stuff behind a pay wall. I won’t miss it.
The deal with the paywall is a bit unbalanced. You simultaneously want altruistic “help out the little guys” subscriptions, and FOMO subscriptions. When I was a subscriber, it was for the former. I’ll never subscribe for the latter. Make the FOMO content a slide-show with ads between every slide for the non subscriber. Maybe the ideal is a “stop pissing me off” option.
Calling cloth the option for “Cheap Bastards” isn’t the way. I’m sure you thought it was smooth and cute, but it was 80-grit for me.
Counterpoint: PLEASE NO SLIDESHOWS.
Nothing says “we only care about juicing the view count” like a damn slideshow.
(Sentiment is quadruply so for ones with computer-torturing ads. You don’t want to drive people away with intrusive advertising before they’re hooked as readers.)
Yes! The whole point was to start an awesome cars site w/ interesting/funny articles and NOT have slideshows and ads that cover literally half the screen. I’m glad they vowed to never do that when they started
I am not a member, and I don’t plan to be. I love this site, but the idea of a paywall for content like this is just not going to work. Newspapers are dying, because no one is willing to pay for something that you can get for free. The same goes for this type of content. I think going the membership route is misguided. If you can’t find a way to support the site with ad revenue and merch, I don’t think you have a viable business model, no matter how great the site is.
That said, if anyone complains about the ads, they damn well should put their money where their mouth is and sign up for a membership. You can’t have it both ways. Either pay for the membership, or deal with the ads. I personally will take the ads.
Also, I think you are missing and opportunity with your merch. It is kind of boring. If it was more fun (think of a t-shirt with David pointing a rust heap with the caption “Holy Grail” for example), I think more people would purchase it.
They did have some fun shirts before. I’ve gotten laughs from the groundhog shirt.
Pretty cool that Hyundai is bring back the FORD FLEX
Lol.
That was my first impression when I saw it
They crashed a flex a rangerover sport and put some 4runner fender flares on it.
As a general note, I have no intention of signing up for membership. Not because the content isn’t great, or I don’t think the entertainment derived is worthy of some money (it is), but I’m tired of f***ing subscriptions, especially for something digital. Amazon prime, Spotify, Netflix, HBO, YouTube TV during basketball season, Disney plus, etc-it just all adds up and I can’t justify a personal subscription on top of what the family uses. I’ll gladly keep scrolling with the ad blocker off, but have no intentions of signing up for another subscription that puts nothing in my hand.
That said, if y’all were to do something like a quarterly magazine, filled with novel content I’d likely put my money down. Bonus points for big stuff, like have an issue where Mercedes and David take on the trans America trail (YJ vs klr?) or something
Also, as a general note, half the reason I stopped reading the old site was because the ads would crash the site five times while trying to read an article. Idk what it is, but chrome mobile glitches hard while reading, causing the page to jump, then it refuses to let me scroll back up. Might be something for y’all to look into. Mercedes recommended I clear data for the site, which worked for a day or two, but it does it at least 50% of the time.
I’ll check that out. We’re extremely light on ads and haven’t had reports of this happening. What kind of phone? Also, please email me at matt@theautopian.com so we can have our tech team check that out.
It’s happened with two different iPhones (se and 12 or 13), and has been going on for at least 6 months. It’s not always so bad that I can’t get through an article, but it’s not uncommon for me to just give up or have to switch to safari. I think image loading causes the page to jump down a bit, then it just glitches and jumps down every time I try to scroll back up. Not the end of the world, and certainly not jalopnik level, but still a PITA
I have the same issue. Less often than on the old site, but still occasionally.
I have had this same exact issue snapping ahead to the next picture or ad. Chrome on an iPhone 2020 se.
Almost 30 years ago, I sold used cars. And I refused to sell two brands: Hyundai and Renault. Had Kia existed in the US market at the time, there might have been a third brand on that list. Renault is long gone form these shores, and I cannot comment on their current quality. My reasons were simple: they were all junk and not worth the after-sale pain.
But holy crap, Hyundai! What a turn around.
I now have two cars: a 2020 Kia Soul for my wife and the first brand new car I have ever purchased, a 2023 Hyundai Santa Cruz. They’re both good looking (if a little weird, which is a plus to me) and have great warranties. So far they’re also both been perfectly reliable. they meet our “daily driver” needs just fine. I’m glad to see Hyundai continuing to bring interesting, engaging and reliable cars to the market at decent prices.
I’m still on the Hyundai/Kia=junk side
Glad that it works for other people though!
My own personal take on the member posts: I followed D&T over here for the shitbox community. That’s what I would place the most equity in if I paid for membership – more community stories and content. That could include wrenching tales, local events and meetups, how-tos on obscure models using even more obscure processes, etc.
IMO the public-consumption stuff like reviews, motorsports (broad coverage anyway, individual tales of Gambler off-road resuscitations and Lemons sweeping victories are more “community” to me), branded/sponsored content, The Bishop, etc. is fine because that will cater to the hit and run, eyeballs on the ads and clicks on the page crowd. An internal membership ring should be more intimate.
Agree on the community thing. We’re working up a bunch of event ideas right now.
Also the turbo vantruck is complete and I need to figure out how to write it up because damn that was a wild ride
I’m OK with a paywall for:
* reviews. This ain’t happening because they’re SEO gold. That’s fine. But they’re everywhere and while the autopian has its own voice, they’re commoditized. And I’m not buying anything anytime soon.
* engineering deep dives. They’re too deep for me.
* wrenching. They’re awesome because DT is so great, but they’re not super applicable.
* camper, over landing, off roading content.
* whatever is paywalled today.
* half of Thomas’s content, not because it’s not great (it is) but because he writes so much I can’t keep up.
* marketplace madness. This is also commodity content. Jalopnik has it. Reddit has a weekly thread.
No paywall:
* torch anything
* gossin anything
* bishop
* Adrian
* morning dump and news
* shitbox showdown
* the rest of Thomas’s content
Hth
I came over from the old site, which used to be so much fun. Anyone who finds ads on Autopian to be onerous should go have a look at J-nik, which is now factually unreadable.Yet I still go there to read Emslie, every damn day.
I’m a member because I want to support you guys, that is all. I’m aware that membership is not affordable to everybody, yet I predict there are some of us who might give a little more if you had a “donate“ button, or a space for additional donation when we renew membership. I can see paying more than my current membership, but maybe not all the way up to the next level. Yeah, I want to give you money.
Best things:
– morning dump, done with true professional sheen.
– Car reviews. Agree, do comparisons. PHEVs.
– The good mood that still largely prevails. Incredible. Remarkably few pedantic bullshit arguments. Try to think of anyplace else on the Internet that’s always fun and always happy.
– your great writer line up.
– I have to call out Gossin for the humor and emotion of his articles. You OK, bro?
– I’m sure there’s more.
Thanks for all the fish.
I feel the same about the donate button. I subscribed on the first day it was offered just because I wanted to support. I don’t want anything extra for it, and I might drop down to cloth because I have too many t-shirts.
This community is amazing. The writers here have done a great job keeping us from getting too political or hostile toward each other. I have only seen a few arguments/rants break out, and each time I swear half the staff was in here shutting it down.
Hmm… donate button? Maybe. I wonder if we can make it more specific, like a Project Car Tip Jar or something?
Torch meds jar?
Defector has both “send us a tip (news) and “send us a tip ($)” in their dropdown menu, which made me chuckle when I noticed it.
“Buy us shower noodles” (or something to that effect) is really not a bad idea.
Yes, as usual Stef knows, “send us a tip ($),” that’s it right there.
Making it more specific is a good idea. Then of course having follow up articles on how the money was spent, for example if it was used for a project car. Which of course would be a win-win.
1. People donate bc they want to help the site to succeed & grow
2. More material for articles/posts
Making it more specific also has the added benefit of thr transparency & could lead to improving community involvement.
Much like any new endevor, experimentation is needed to figure out what works
For Members only:
1.) I think you should have member questions for new car releases that people vote on and the most voted ones get asked of the relevant parties and the replies are recorded, no matter how hard or automotively “taboo” the questions are (Like what’s the approximate starting price of the new ID Buzz? Why does the new “Silverado” BEV have less payload than a Maverick Hybrid? Why is the Maverick Hybrid no longer “standard”?)
If noone asks these questions publicly then the car companies will never learn. Y’all got a powerful site, throw your weight around a bit for good.
The responses will “leak” if they’re massive news noone else has but the specific questions that are not big news will be members only and won’t likely leak.
2.) (Tying into above) Autopian interviews of auto execs with questions suggested and voted on by Members
3.) Autopian member only store where small run Autopian merch is sold. Bonus points if you have Autopian edition tools and such there as well.
Non Members and Members:
Ads for relevant things to this website y’all actually like instead of generic ads (I’m getting ads for buying a new Ford and a New Jeep but I won’t buy any new car from either.)
Relevant quality brand shoutouts.
Tips and tricks for wrenching
Engine and Transmission “Reviews” from mechanics that work on them that lay out common problems and the easy fixes and inspections one can do for them.
Keep branching out to include tons of different types of wrenching like boats, bikes, etc.
*Wrenchers together strong*
That’s all I can think of at the moment.
Boatwrenching? Now I’m curious!
DO NOT put the kitties behind a paywall. They are adorable and everyone needs to see them
Oh boy. IDK. The kitties are pretty powerful.
Seconded: Cats are traffic GOLD.
Agreed. The only articles on this site that I have gotten my girlfriend to read are the cat articles. She enjoyed them and I’m glad I didn’t need to log her in.