[vasudeva]

How many people would spend more than 8-10 lakhs on a Hyundai/Suzuki if there are other, more expensive, but lesser `specced' versions. Hyundai and Suzuki have brand equity and that enables them to sell at a particular price point, and it will be some time (or perhaps a long time) before people feel comfortable in spending more.

[amitk26]

Just one question to thread starter , Why do you think T-BHP members owe some sort of responsibility to promote Hyndai Cars in India ?

[sgiitk]

I feel this is part of the bias against non Western and (now) non Japanese brands. I reemmber when I bought my Santro and acquaintance who is a garage owner commenting to the effect that I am surprised that you have bought your second Hyundai. Most people buy once but not a second time. The Japanese also suffered from this perception at one time.

Also, a brand has an image attached to it. This is why so called deluxe labels came about - Cadillac, Lexus, Acura, Lincoln, to name a few. I cannot bring myself around to appreciate a Chevrolet, as at one time it was considered as the blue collar workers car!

I suspect Maruti Suzuki and Hyundai may have to coin second labels for their premium products, and possibly set up separate distribution chains.

[chevelle]

Originally Posted by sunil8089

Hyundai cars are much reliable and have better quality than Maruti cars. The areas where they lags are:
- High maintenance cost after three years
- mileage
- Spare parts cost
- Build quality
- ride quality

I would like to disagree with you here

- High Maintenance: My santro is 3+ year old, and old cost we bear is the regular service cost. no other cost have been spent for maintaining it. its the same for my cousin's i10 too which is nearing 3 years.

- I get around 12- 14 kmpl in our santro. highly satisfied with it. i am aware of wagon r of my relative which gives around the same. so no issues there

- build quality: One of the best build i have come agree in its segment. atleast better than wagon r and alto.

- ride quality: lets say its bumpy in rear of santro and wagon r, this is my personal opinion after sitting in the rear. did one way till Shrinathji(rajasthan) in santro and wagon r.

so i feel its almost at par with maruti, but Hyundai still have some catching up to do.

[greenhorn]

Originally Posted by diabloo

Which product of Hyundai in India is cheap?

well, do you see any of their 'premium' products like the sonata/elantra/tuscon selling, even if not in an absolute sense, at least relatively compared to their german/jap competitors ?

[VahanPujari]

Originally Posted by mclaren1885

But do we see an equal participation from members here while trying to advice a new car to look at a Hyundai? I guess not.

Actually, when I was in the market for C segment car & exhaustively visited all C Segment advice threads here, every thread has a mention of Verna with good enough recommendations too.

The biggest drawback Verna is facing, IMO is lack of Airbags. Extremely powerful & lively Engine, but coupled with light steering & some questions on Ride & Handling, it makes a dangerous proposition. Besides, almost all cars in the segment has Airbag options available.

Not just the Elantra, even the Getz suffered.

Actually, there are many many cars which are reviewed & declared as extremely good cars but still fail in the marketplace. Apart from the Product there are a host of parameters e.g. Pricing, Positioning, Network, Promotion, Timing, A.S.S. etc etc. Somthing goes wrong somewhere, & its difficult to resurrect.

I would tend to disagree. After the price reduction, Baleno did some brilliant numbers and MUL did consider it as a success as its end neared. This come from a reliable sourse, namely the MD for Marketing & Sales for a very big Maruti dealer in Karnataka.

May be. But still by that time the brand Baleno sufferred enough. It could have done much much more considering the strength of it as a product (backed by the brand-Maruti) at that particular time

[VahanPujari]

Originally Posted by chevelle

I would like to disagree with you here

- High Maintenance: My santro is 3+ year old, and old cost we bear is the regular service cost. no other cost have been spent for maintaining it. its the same for my cousin's i10 too which is nearing 3 years.

- I get around 12- 14 kmpl in our santro. highly satisfied with it. i am aware of wagon r of my relative which gives around the same. so no issues there

- build quality: One of the best build i have come agree in its segment. atleast better than wagon r and alto.

- ride quality: lets say its bumpy in rear of santro and wagon r, this is my personal opinion after sitting in the rear. did one way till Shrinathji(rajasthan) in santro and wagon r.

so i feel its almost at par with maruti, but Hyundai still have some catching up to do.

And this Voice of Customer is not only few cases but spreaded across the market. Word on the street is more powerful in India. If Hyundai did not have all these positives/ good perception in the market, how could it enjoy No. 2 position after Maruti?

EDIT: Its entirely other matter if we try to compare Hyundai sales numbers with Maruti Sales numbers & try to say that it should have been doing more than Maruti. Then this whole perception issue could be bang on target.

[blackasta]

Originally Posted by sgiitk

I suspect Maruti Suzuki and Hyundai may have to coin second labels for their premium products, and possibly set up separate distribution chains.

Exactly. Same as Honda (Acura), Toyota (Lexus) , Nissan (Infiniti) etc. Toyota even got a seperate brand with youth image - scion.

[Gansan]

Another most important consideration for us while buying a car is resale value. I think Maruti is leagues ahead here. I don't think Hyundai can compare in this aspect, except for the Santro.

[mclaren1885]

Originally Posted by amitk26

Just one question to thread starter , Why do you think T-BHP members owe some sort of responsibility to promote Hyndai Cars in India ?

All I am saying is, if you see a good car, do we recommend it OR just ask people NOT to buy a Korean? We are supposed to be the "informed lot" over the aam junta. If we can't be transparent enough in judging cars, can we expect anything less from the general public at hand?

Originally Posted by VahanPujari

The biggest drawback Verna is facing, IMO is lack of Airbags. Extremely powerful & lively Engine, but coupled with light steering & some questions on Ride & Handling, it makes a dangerous proposition. Besides, almost all cars in the segment has Airbag options available.

Honestly, I am surprised the Verna is selling in such huge numbers given that its quite a hoot to drive but dangerous at that too because of its super soft suspension. And its not just the airbags, if you look around cars with optional airbags hardly sell. I find it weird that people are taking to soft comfy suspensions on some powerful engines but don't like to have a good handling car with a powerful engine.

May be. But still by that time the brand Baleno sufferred enough.

True! I wonder why Hyundai never did a resurrection act with some of its other models like they did with the Accent.

Here is another quote from one of the members on another thread.

To tell you the truth I don't feel like driving a Getz or any Hyundai for that matter.

I just don't like the brand that's all. (Really don't know why)

at such statements.

[CarsPG]

While there might be some preconceived notions about Hyundai I think they are rapidly changing. The sales of the i20 are a testament to that. Few would have thought that Hyundai will be able to sell a hatch at Rs. 6 Lacs+ in the Indian market!

If they launch a sedan version of the i20 or some other midsize car with all the same features I think it would sell extremely well as well. I know I would have purchased it even if it was Rs. 1 Lac more expensive than the Linea that I bought.

[chevelle]

Originally Posted by VahanPujari

And this Voice of Customer is not only few cases but spreaded across the market. Word on the street is more powerful in India. If Hyundai did not have all these positives/ good perception in the market, how could it enjoy No. 2 position after Maruti?

EDIT: Its entirely other matter if we try to compare Hyundai sales numbers with Maruti Sales numbers & try to say that it should have been doing more than Maruti. Then this whole perception issue could be bang on target.

if the voice of customer or word on the street is so powerful, than Sunil won't have commented on poor build quality(i still haven't come across any badly built Hyundai), high maintainence, low fuel efficiency. somebody must have told him about this or he must have experienced it himself to state that to which i disagreed as a hyundai santro owner. now if you want, you can term Sunil's statement as perception, biased towards hyundai or preconceived notions about Hyundai's cars, that's entirely upto you till Sunil comes up and clears it. No hard feelings for you Sunil. You are entitled to your opinion.

as for sales numbers, i am not going into that, as no matter what maruti is gonna stay numero uno for long time. its their hard earned image(of low priced, good cars) over long period of time. which will take sometime before somebody catches up, now that could be TATA or Hyundai or any other company.

[Su-47]

As a manufacturer, Hyundai does have a bit of an image problem. Atleast, a part of it can be attributed to events of false advertising (read cheating) they engaged in. for example, when Swift was launched they compared Swift Vs. Santro and quoted wrong figures for the swift leg-room, called the Swift an old-gen tech because it uses Versa engine, and conveniently forgot to mention that even that old-gen engine was more powerful than even the Getz. Left a bad taste..

However, when I was looking for a small car for city use last year, there was not much of choice in comparison to the i10 1.2 (fans of other cars please dont take offence, I felt that there was no contest from the competition in terms of power, refinement of the quality of interiors). Its just that the gearshift wasn't great and the the i10 was about 40K overpriced. So, inspite of not liking hyundai as a brand, I ended up buying i10 for *practical* reasons (not a bad decision, I must say, the little i10 mostly delivers what it promised).

I feel Hyundai's image (and sales) could improve if they:
- Stay away from false advertising
- Get the PR act sorted out: get a better ad agency. Get SRK out of the i10 promos, he was OK when Santro was launched but "SRK and Mr. Wilson": Kinda embarassing for the i10 owners
- Price the products a little more competitively: Don't have to come to the same level as MS, the plastics are better in Hyundai and they must be costing more. Besides, who has the time to wait for months to buy a Maruti?

Cheers,
Su-47

[VahanPujari]

Chevelle - I think I was misunderstood. I don't think the thread compares Hyundai with Maruti only. It says general perception, preconceived notions, bias etc are against Hyundai. I'm not able to figure it out that how the Indian customers who buys so many Hyundai cars to make it No. 2 have bias against Hyundai (isn't this contradicting itself)? Also, in terms of service also, the feedback which is on t-bhp & market also is that Hyundai is 2nd best to Maruti (if not equal) there as well. So, where is the pre-conceived notion by Indian market? In fact, I read somewhere that Hyundai is much more successful in India than the other countries.

If some good models failed, it might not be fault of Indian customers' perception, may be something else, anything else. But why to blame Indian market for that even after choosing it by leaps & bounds to make it No. 2 with huge volumes ? Not fair at all.

[vijaythacker]

well my two cents are we the people in general have the perseption of MSL the best,and so far many goes to buy their products which are firstly perfectly priced till Astar, company knows what to deliver and at what price, *** and spares availability.Hyundai is taking this things slowly but steadily which is why they are at No.2 spot here, they are better with their quality, ***, better dealerships and their attitude.If their pricing goes a bit more to compete with other players, wrong advertisings and stop comparing with maruti, things would change for sure.
I didnot believed korean company for my purchase four years back but when a cousin brought Getz and Santro, things changed for me and my belief with their product, ***,quality.