Grandeur of the past?

Don't be deceived, we admire the Hyundai Grandeur. It's well packaged and priced, it's reasonably competent dynamically and offers a lot of kit for the money. It just doesn't sell. That's not our problem, it's the way the market perceives that car.

Year-to-date sales for the Grandeur? 43 whole units. Nissan has sold over a thousand units of the Maxima and even Skoda has sold more of the Superb (62) -- which hasn't even been on sale for the full year to date.

What's the fix then? Hyundai's Director of Sales & Marketing, Kevin McCann, has already said that the importer cannot compete in the VFACTS large-car segment against the two locally-manufactured rear-drivers, the Holden Commodore and the Ford Falcon.

In fact, based on current VFACTS figures, the Grandeur is not even taking up the fight to other imported front-wheel drive models, let alone the three locally manufactured cars (including the FWD Toyota Aurion).

The only car the Grandeur has outsold in the segment this year is the Mitsubishi 380 -- and the Tonsley Park facility ceased production of that car in March of last year. And it's not like buyers won't pay Grandeur prices for a Hyundai; punters have bought 1864 units of the Santa Fe offroader this year.

So we reloaded this argument and put it to Hyundai's long-suffering PR spokesman, Ben Hershman: Wouldn't Hyundai Australia be better served by replacing the Grandeur with a right-hand drive Genesis, both in coupe and sedan form?

The Grandeur is possibly too close in market position to the mid-size Sonata and it appeals to broadly the same market demographic, but it's more expensive and brings little else to the party where packaging is concerned.

A Genesis sedan would pull in some of the retirees who once upon a time bought the Toyota Cressida, as well as a bunch of younger (family?) buyers who refuse to buy the local brands, but admire rear-wheel drive traits in a car.

The Genesis coupe, with the right sort of targeted marketing, could be a new age 200SX, as we've said in the past. Rhys Millen is working with the coupe for motor sport competition in the US. Both body styles would be quite distinct from the market positioning of the Sonata and its 'YF' platform replacement.

The conversation with Hershman was entirely hypothetical, since Hyundai is not building right-hand drive versions of the Genesis and has announced no intention to do so.

"There is no new news," Hershman confirms, on that point.

"I don't know if there'll be a replacement to the Genesis sedan, but one could speculate that [as] it's been North American Car of the Year [and] it's doing very well -- I don't know because I haven't been told -- one would speculate that something must be, probably, going to replace it.

"We have no confirmation whether there would be a right-hand drive version of that, [but] what I can assure you of, is that we have very good relations with HMC, historically...

"They are very aware of the positive and enthusiastic feedback we've been getting about those two [promotional Genesis] coupes [currently here in Australia in left-hand drive form]."

Hershman describes the idea of replacing the Grandeur with a theoretical RHD Genesis sedan as "a very interesting point". However, he also believes that any marketplace confusion between the medium-segment car and the large car will be reduced with the introduction of the new YF model next year.

"I would agree with Kevin [McCann] about the comments concerning Ford and Holden and so on. Grandeur clearly isn't a big seller for us and we believe that NF Sonata [the current model] is a very strong car, but for a number of reasons perhaps, it hasn't reached the volume that its potential could be. We believe the YF will change that."

He explains that Hyundai has ramped up corporate fleet sales over the last twelve months, having appointed a new general manager at the end of last year. So far, Hyundai has found that it can promote the 'i-Series' products (such as i30 and iLoad) and even the Tucson compact SUV to these fleets, because they're currently going through the pain of downsizing their vehicles.

When it comes to selling to fleets, the current corporate view is that smaller cars should replace larger ones and Grandeur, other than sheer mass, offers little to set it apart from other models in the Hyundai range. 

"Getz is just a great brand strength name for us, but Grandeur [isn't]..." Hershman continues.

"If we had Genesis now, the Genesis would do very well as a product. Whether we're quite ready to successfully make that product work in that segment -- that's an interesting question, which I can't answer...

"We know -- perhaps more than many car companies -- that you can't just bring a car here and sell it. You've gotta have a business case to do it, you've gotta know how you want to sell it and you've gotta know that there's going to be demand for it... and that you can fulfil the expectations of the factory."

So we're locked into this conundrum. Hyundai, the company that usually takes great care researching its markets thoroughly, plainly expected the Grandeur to sell well enough in this market. That's not happening. Whether as a consequence of the Grandeur situation or not, Hyundai has no high expectations for the altogether more appealing Genesis siblings in the Australian market.

It's true that Hyundai wouldn't attract thousands of ex-Commodore/Falcon owners to the brand with the Genesis, but it's hard to imagine the Korean import couldn't conquest respectable sales from Accord, Aurion and Maxima -- certainly more than 43 in a year.

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