Hyundai fights the battles it can win

It's not certain Hyundai's next mid-size car (built on the 'YF' platform) will be named Sonata here, but it will have the importer's undivided attention when it lands.

Hyundai's local Director of Sales & Marketing, Kevin McCann, says that whatever the Sonata replacement will be called -- the Carsales Network unsuccessfully attempted to bait him with 'i50' -- that name should reflect that the company has "moved on" and now offers a "different product set."

An i-prefixed name looks like a better than even chance though. Australia was the first market outside Europe to adopt the new nomenclature, when the i30 was launched here at the end of 2007. Conservatively speaking, the i30 has at least met Hyundai's sales expectations.

"The i30 range has moved into third position in the small car segment, which is a very strong position and one that we set as a target when we launched the car in 2007 -- and in fact, in total volumes, we're now selling more i30s than we are Getzes, which is also a great achievement," said McCann during the media briefing for the upgraded R Series Santa Fe last week.

So the i30 nameplate appears to have been embraced by Australians and that in itself is a strong argument for Hyundai ditching the Sonata name in Australia.

"We're looking at a variety of names for the car," says McCann. "The mid-level sedan segment is really a great opportunity. It's one of the biggest segments in the marketplace and it's one we can see lots of potential in..."

The new car will continue to be sold in North America as the Sonata, since that name has long-established cachet and the model is an important one.

"The main reason it's important there is it's the car they produce [in the US]," explained McCann.

As an import, it's less critical in Australia, where Hyundai's small and light cars sell in proportionately much larger numbers. Australia is already Hyundai's largest pure export market in the world, according to McCann, but Hyundai feels there's still a lot of untapped potential in the VFACTS medium-car segment for the importer -- certainly more so than is the case with the local large-car segment.

McCann believes that marketing of the current model Sonata has suffered because "Grandeur was somewhat of a distraction for us." The large Hyundai was launched with diesel engine at the same time as the upgraded Sonata model, late last year. It absorbed some of the funds and resources that would have been otherwise available to provide the mid-size Sonata with a stronger sales and marketing impetus.

While there's no suggestion the company will discontinue the Grandeur, Hyundai will change the balance of its marketing to strengthen the Sonata's local profile.

McCann, describing the VFACTS large car segment, sums up the problem Hyundai faces with Grandeur in this way: "The large segment is dominated by very few players... the top three are built here."

McCann, referring to the "strong following" for the Commodore and Falcon, points to "even the difficulty there for Aurion... and you multiply that for Grandeur."

"The medium segment is more open," he says. "The ground is more fertile in the medium segment."

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