End to Grandeur

The Hyundai Grandeur has long been considered something of a grandpa's car. Always erring on the side of comfort and budget-price luxury than dynamic ability — and wrapped up in innocuous styling — the Grandeur never set the world on fire for sales.

So it's not altogether surprising that Hyundai has surrendered to market perception and axed the large front-drive car from the local line-up — just as an altogether new model has been released.

The HG Grandeur (pictured), launched in Korea back in January, is a car that embodies many of the i45's styling traits, but goes a step beyond. Gone is the grizzled owl nose of the medium-segment sedan and the high, rising waistline. In place of the latter is a 1960s-style coke-bottle waist, with curves and swage lines that bring to mind current Jaguar styling. Pictures may not do it justice, but it's handsome and striking in reality.

All of this is academic however, since it won't be sold in Australia.

The problem for Grandeur is one of brand perception, as much as anything else. Hyundai just isn't known in Australia for building large — and relatively expensive — sedans. And no amount of marketing smarts will change that perception in the short term... short enough to make a viable business case for the Grandeur and the rear-drive Genesis sedan (see separate story). For the same reasons, you can rule out the larger Equus.

"We decided not to bring that car [HG Grandeur] into Australia;" Hyundai's Ben Hershman told the Carsales Network, "Historically we haven't sold many Grandeurs in Australia... going back four or five years, it has not been successful for us."

Hershman is Senior Manager for PR and Events at HMCA (Hyundai Motor Corporation Australia). He says that Grandeur was faced with a tough challenge against the Holden Commodore, perennial sales champion in its market segment.

VFACTS Medium and large-car segments are dominated either by the Toyota Camry for the former or the Holden Commodore (and Ford Falcon to a lesser degree) for the latter. Both segments appear to be in steady decline, principally due to the rise of SUVs, which can be the same size or smaller, but offer more practical packaging.

In staving off the threat posed by SUVs, Camry and Commodore have become indomitable within their respective segments — and have found a niche in appealing to target buyers for whom SUVs just don't cut it.

But in raising the bar for SUVs, the Holden and the Toyota have made life very difficult for their respective competitors in the same segment. Hershman mounts a case for the medium segment offering Hyundai more hope than the large-car segment.

"One's a much steeper hill than the other," he said, by which he means importers are effectively locked out of the large-car segment, but there's a ray of hope in the medium-car segment. That's something that Ford has found recently with its Mondeo, although the Mondeo only sells half the number of Camrys in a month — and only because traditional Ford buyers can't purchase a Falcon wagon any more.

As an exercise in lateral thinking, we asked Hershman whether Hyundai could have adopted a strategy similar to Honda's — two similar cars, but one contesting rivals in the medium segment, one in the large-car segment (Accord, Accord Euro).

If timing had worked in the importer's favour, we asked, could Hyundai have introduced the i40 sedan and wagon to the local market, competing in the medium-car segment — along with the HG-generation Grandeur for large-car buyers? That would mean not bringing the i45 in at all.

"I don't think so," he answered, "because the i45 is a smaller car than the Grandeur. I think we made the right call with the i45..."

Hershman correctly contends that the question is hypothetical and would have involved "waiting, waiting, waiting..."

And at the end of the day, the i45 records respectable numbers, outselling Mazda6 last month and being beaten into second place by the Ford Mondeo with just 37 extra sales (559 for the Ford, 522 for the Hyundai). It's unlikely, given Australians' aversion to large cars that aren't rear-wheel drive, that the Grandeur could approach that sort of sales success. Lastly, while Hyundai can work at improving the i45's tally in its segment, the importer can also improve its overall market share in mid-size cars by the simple expedient of introducing the i40.

So we're not sure, will anyone miss the 'lost opportunity' the HG Grandeur represents? Probably not...

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