Hyundai pays tribute to late chassis guru

Hyundai Australia has paid tribute to the influence of the late British engineer David Potter on its innovative local chassis development program and the structures of its parent company’s R&D processes.

The Korean car-maker has also made clear its Australian chassis tuning regime will grow as it goes forward and evolve to include an earlier and deeper involvement in future model development.

Potter, who died of cancer in July, joined the Australian program as a consultant in 2013, two years after it was first established.

The program’s introduction and expansion to cover most of the Hyundai models imported for sale in Australia coincided with a rise in quality perception of the brand and its sales over the past decade.

Potter was also involved in localisation of Genesis luxury brand chassis tune, most recently the GV70 mid-size SUV.

Only a few other brands localise the chassis tune of their vehicle for Australia’s often sub-standard roads. Fellow Hyundai Motor Group member Kia kicked off its local program in 2009. Others include Ford, Mitsubishi, Toyota and, at least for its homegrown Warrior utes, Nissan.

Hyundai Australia head of future product and future business group Andrew Tuitahi formed a friendship as well as a business relationship with Potter.

“David was amazing. He was a mentor for me and he gave me a different way to look at cars, evaluate cars and truly understand what we were doing,” Tuitahi said

“He had this unique ability to combine the science and the numbers with the feel. He was equally good at both and I think he is that perfect demonstration of suspension tuning being a black art.

“In terms of what he delivered to us it was a discipline around telemetry and simulation and always trying to look for the cause of the issue in data.”

Potter contributed the chassis design of the legendary BMW E36 3 Series before a long period in motorsport including the World Rally Championship.

Tuitahi said Potter’s skills were noted beyond Australia within Hyundai’s massive global research and development division.

“I can’t say it’s directly because of him but certainly there were discussion had at the R&D centre [in Korea] around the way we tune and utilise these kinds of systems and... very similar types of simulations are conducted at R&D centre by ride and handling engineers.

“His style exists at HMC now.”

Because of his illness Potter stopped travelling to Australia some years ago. But Tuitahi said his legacy carries on.

“He definitely leaves us in a good position,” said Tuitahi. “I think the work we have done since he has been unable to join us has been excellent.”

Despite some interruptions through the COVID era Tuitahi said the chassis localisation program remains a core part of Hyundai Australia’s new model roll-out.

He cited recent discussions with new Hyundai Australia managing director Ted Lee as proof of that.

“He is very keen to keep our local development in place and growing. He was mentioning the need to employ additional talent, work on developing the talent that we have and keep the momentum up.

“So it’s not going away.”

In the recent past a group of models including the Tucson, Santa Fe and Palisade SUVs, the Staria van/people-mover and the IONIQ 5 EV have not been subject to local dynamics tuning.

Tuitahi said a combination of factors contributed to that outcome: COVID restrictions that prevented local testing, the sheer volume of new model launches and the quality of the standard suspension and steering tune supplied by Hyundai in Korea, Europe and the US that did not require local fettling.

“Our goal isn’t always to localise a car, it’s to make sure a car performs well here,” Tuitahi explained.

“I think the cars we addressed, they were ultimately looked after and I think they came out pretty good.

“And then there were some cars that just sailed through, like the Palisade and Tucson. We drove them and thought: ‘What could we do to make it better? What kind of parts are available? What technology are the dampers using? Could we spend that time and come up with something better?’ And in those instances the answer was no.”

Tuitahi stressed Hyundai Australia only claims a model is localised if it has been subjected to testing in Australia and has a unique combination of springs, stabiliser bars, bushings and a bespoke damper tune.

Significantly, the localisation program is also evolving to include Australian input being embedded at an earlier stage of model development, rather than tuning late-stage prototypes only months before production starts.

As an example of that Tuitahi explained Hyundai Australia product development manager Tim Rodgers was part of a global team developing a new model.

“He is working with Korean engineers, German engineers, American engineers and they are working through a project now,” he said.

“The idea is that project is validated in Korea, in Germany, in the United States and in Australia.

“In being part of that you can affect a greater number of parts than what we have traditionally.

“So if I think about what our contribution can be, our involvement, the requirement for local tuning, that can be the ideal solution for us rather than just getting a late-stage prototype and tuning the dampers here.”

While Tuitahi wouldn’t say what program Rodgers is involved in, it is likely to be the IONIQ 5 N high-performance EV that’s due on sale here by the end of this year.

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