Great read. thanks for linking it.

 

cool. keep the resale value high.

 

I test drove a '12 Hyundai Accent a few months ago. Hyundai has improved a lot but there is still room for improvement. The interior quality of the Accent was nice and it was very quiet. It drove like crap though. Steering was pretty dead in that you felt virtually no connection to the road. The clutch was also too light and the shifter was lifeless. Both the Fit and the Ford Focus which I drove were much better in that regard.

 

*Iphone4s

 

Hyundai will never come close to Honda in reputation and buyer loyalty. Neither will it every reach the level of technical experience and sophistication of Japanese cars and engines.

Don't be fooled by the price and sales numbers. Yes there are a lot of cheap Hyundai. They can't quiet compete with Honda's advances in suspension and driveability because it would require a lot of R&D funds which would bring hyndai's prices to uncompetitive levels. Hence, it's like cheap shampoo at a dollar store, and head and shoulders shampoo that's 5 times more expensive.

Do you want to wash your head with a dollar store shampoo and have the dandruff? (try it).

I heard a Hyundai with a knocking engine (around 2005 model) and it reminded me of Hyndai's true roots.

Italicized H is for people who can't afford the H. That's why they draw everything down to "price advantage".

 

You say this, yet where is that 6-speed automatic from Honda that's missing from most of the lineup, when Hyundai has built their own in house 6AT and put it all over their lineup? Where is direct injection in Honda engines today?

Once upon a time people laughed at Honda and Toyota, and look where those companies are today? Sales numbers, Hyundai's already catching up pretty quickly... loyalty will come when customers get value and features and realize the reliability today is far less an issue than a decade ago.

 

I don't think Honda needs direct injection. Also the 6 speed is no good if it breaks a lot more often than a regular 5 speed. Guess what engine became the office junior racing engine choice? L-15A. Not hyundai's direction injection.
Think about the reasons...

http://www.todaracingusa.com/topics/race_engines.asp- scroll to the bottom.

 

They need something that will generate more HP and torque with good fuel efficiency gains... the only thing available today is direct injection and turbos, both of which they've chosen not to introduce into street vehicles.

Honda has the ability to do this, I'm not questioning that - look at the Indycar V8... but where's the V8 for Acura? And next year its going to be a 2.2L twin-turbo V6. Sure would love to see a street version of such an engine in a hotrod Civic Type-R.

The move to 6-speed is about mileage gains. If you know any history, you'd know about the troubled history of Honda ATs and transmission failures. Hardly bulletproof stuff. Great manual transmissions they might make, yet issues like the 3rd gear issue still plagued the 8th gen Civic Si.

You can knock on Hyundai about reliability, but when one is objective enough to see... Honda has had their share of troubles. How about all those engine mounts and issues they had getting VCM to work right? I still think VCM is a lousy answer... the J-series engine prior to VCM though is an absolute gem in smoothness.

And how many car buyers care about racing engine choices?

Its not so much the lack of technology know how in Honda today, vs. what they choose to offer to the public in street cars, that's going to kill them slowly if they're not careful.

 

The reason the honda engine was chosen over old ford engine is because of its superior reliability (has to be rebuilt every year and a half vs 6 months for the ford's engine.

Despite small issues, Hondas have been taking top honors for most reliable vehicles... (Accord, for instance).

Honda doesn't need an engine with the most horsepower at the expense of complexity, reliability, cost, and maybe noise of large size... It's all about a balance, and honda does great job balancing all of the relevant factors.


Honda is also smart enough to know what to offer. That is why it is consistently leading the way with its accords and civics.

 

I'm just glad there are more competitive choices among small hatchbacks now. In '09, there really was no choice in my book other than the Fit. I would probably still end up with a Fit if I were shopping today (cargo volume is a major factor for me), but the shopping would be a lot more interesting.

 

With all do respect sir, and I do mean with all do respect, the word "NEVER" should never be associated with business and is quite an ignorant comment.

After WWII, Americans never imagined that they would be buying Japanese TVs and other electronics.

Americans didnt believe that Honda would one day sell more motorcycles than Harley Davidson.

Windows users never imagined that one day Apple would be a threat to the MS monopoly, which was a high as 97% userbase. Now Apple has a home computer userbase creeping to 20%, and if you factor in the mobile market(iphone, ipad) its even greater, since many people use these devices more than desktops. And that's not even bringing up Android devices.

Sony was clearly the most dominant electronic company in the world, selling the most TVs, creating the Walkman and Discman, etc. Yet in the early 2000s Samsung began to outsell Sony and hasnt looked back.

Apple, a Tech company, would one day become more valuable than Exxon, and oil company.

All these things were never thought possible, yet happened. So to say that Hyundai will never even be Honda's equal is a statement with no weight to it. Companies that do not progress, evolve, innovate, have been in high decline or has become extinct in the last decade. The video game industry is one clear example of companies constantly innovating in order to compete.

Sales numbers drive business, no matter what personal opinions are felt. You should remember this. There are many drivers out there who have never driven a Honda. They dont know what a Honda built engine, transmission or a Honda driving experience feels like. So what do you think is going to happen when a Ford or Nissan driver for the last 10 years, someone who says they would never buy a Honda because its a "ricer car" is going to think when his neighbor parks his new Hyundai Sonata Turbo next door and offers him a ride? Then he drives it, is amazed at all the standard features, not to mention the fact that you can put regular in a turbo car and get excellent mpg? Do you think he's really thinking how that compares to a Honda? Not at all. He's comparing to the cars he has always driven.

To turn a company around takes many years. Hyundai has been doing this change for the last 10 years. I know because at one point I worked at a dealer that sold Hyundai. And Hyundai does not only make cars. They have a lot experiences in many fields, which gives them an advantage to Honda, in the sense that they dont have to outsource for many of their car parts. Honda is been going the opposite way for the at least the last 5 years. How long do think it will take Honda to turn the company around?

If they never realize the problem in the first place, it will "never" happen.

 

I beg to differ - they do, if they want to remain competitive. HP has gone up over the years, and when car buyers look at the stats, they will find it harder and harder to buy a car with engines that has HP figures from 10 years ago.

They've gotten far too conservative, there are features they could have offered that other manufacturers are offering today, that won't even affect reliability any. Like a manumatic mode for the regular Civic/Accord... Honda has the technology well developed and paid off already, no reason its STILL not there today.

Owned a 7th gen Accord... got it on a short 2-year lease, since I figured the 8th gen was coming out. The 8th gen was so disappointing, and there wasn't a lot of cars out there that really excited me much... ended up getting the Fit since it was cheap, and even my el cheapo Fit has paddle shifters when the Accord came with NONE (totally dumb of Honda). There's nothing wrong with the 8th gen except it being totally bland, boring and bloated (snooze!). And where's the 6MT sedan option for it? For the V6 engine, they added the VCM crap to the Accord... the previous J30 was a true gem of an engine. VCM is a ton of unnecessary added complexity for a small gain in MPG.

So I've recently got rid of the GE8 for a 9th gen Civic Si... which 8th gen owners are hating, since it is a different type of car given the engine choice. The 1st gen TSX was interesting to me but always lacked a bit of power... they made things worse in the 2nd gen by adding pork/weight and no engine changes to compensate... strip all that, add the LSD, its a baby TSX of sorts, but not the high-revving Si of past. The K24 in Si incarnation is just at the threshold I'd consider sufficient to make the cut into sport territory (sub 7 0-60) but is nowhere near what some of the competition is capable off.

But if you look at history, after 10 years, Honda is still stuck where it WAS... performance level of the RSX-S to the 8th/9th gen Si, is all pretty much in the same ballpark. 200hp in a 2012 model is not what it used to mean in a 2002 model. The Si should have like 240hp today stock. Would be real easy for Honda to do with a K20 turbo... keep the high revving of old, and get a lot of more torque with a dual scroll turbo add on. The only reason the Si is still attractive is the low price of entry and all the old/reused components means it should have good reliability (hmm... a Honda, selling, on being lower priced, vs other virtues?).

Highly doubt I'd upgrade in 5 years to a 10th gen Si if its still stuck in 2002 levels though. I would hope in 3 years when the mid cycle refresh comes, they'd at least tweak the output some.

Meanwhile - Honda has totally lost the hybrid race... from the company that started it with the original Insight, the mild hybrids they are producing today can't touch the refinement and efficiency that Toyota has achieved with the Prius.

Honda going green definitely leaves them in a very oddball spot... they're turning away the tuning crowd slowly but surely, and the greenies are buying the Prius and Volt instead. This is a company that has an identity crisis today. Acura - let's not even go there, its a dismal failure compared to Lexus.

The only sales problem for Hyundai today is the inability to keep up to demand...

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/09/...ndai-shortage/

 

Being a Honda fan, it's sad to say but Hyundai is catching up (sales, features, etc.). Two of my neighbors bought Hyundai's recently, one was a previous Nissan lover, and the other bought strictly Honda's for the past 30yrs (I wanted sooo bad to buy her 1st gen. civic, yeeeears ago). What mainly made her switch to Hyundai was the price, and all the extra's she got for it. She was looking for a Civic like her old one, and complained to me that they made the Civic too big, no hatch version, etc, etc. That's one of Honda's most common problems; they keep increasing the size of the models. They need to rework their formula of old, and apply it with new technology (ie. high revving reliable engines and adding turbo, suspension, etc) while still keeping the compact segment reliable and affordable while also adding features. They're losing a lot of customers to Hyundai, but unless their reliability gets better those customers will return to Honda. My neighbor barely drives her Hyundai (less thank 5,000 miles in 3 yrs... yes 5K. all NYC local milage, no hwy), and it's been in to the dealer 3 times in the past yr for issues. She bought her car a few months before me, and I kept telling her to look at the base Fit for her needs. After seeing my 5MT Navi, especially the utility of it, and hearing about the mpg I'm getting she wishes she got a Fit.

Yeah Hyundai is creeping up on the Japanese car makers, but imho it will take a decade or more of solid reliability to even get me to think about one. The main reason I bought my Honda is because I got sick, tired and broke seeing my mechanic so often during my few yr stint of non-Honda cars, after my Integra died.

 

Hyandai/Kia's rise to actual competitor status spells nothing but good for Honda fans. Honda cannot afford to be complacent.

couple more articles:

Hyundai's enviable new problem

Hyundai's hot hand

 

Nice to see more validation for our selection.


I was tempted by Hyundai and I test-drove and examined a couple.

I was just put-off by their still lacklustre reliability record (well ... that and the lack of cargo room, poor rear-window visibility, and a few other things) as outlined by Consumer Reports. Their long warranty period is only mildly reassuring. I don't want to visit a mechanic that often even if a potential problem is covered.

Only time will tell if the current crop are more reliable than the previous generation. But the Fit still fills all my needs nicely today. I don't care that the dash is hard plastic instead of some other soft material (that's a derivative of plastic).

 

I took a long hard look at the Hyundai Elantra.

I was not impressed with the Hyundai dealership or the salesperson
who appeared lazy.

The vehicle itself was decent but I like the open flexible nature of the
Fit interior and the fact I am more comfortable in the Fit.

Long warranty of Hyundai is nice... but that does not trump the excellent
reliability of the Fit.

 

Hyundai is definitely becoming a minor competitor to Honda even if they aren't a threat yet. Hyundai has started encroaching on markets higher than Honda so in some ways, Hyundai's increase in sales will have an impact. Their quality reputation has skyrocketed and while it may not be as good as Honda, it is above many of the American Manufacturers so those who were considering buying Ford/Chevy/Dodge vs. Honda/Toyota, now have a middle ground that is cheaper and "good enough" in most cases for them.

As for apple and the iOS devices, android has skyrocketed past them in market share and is well on their way to 50% of the smartphone/tablet market being almost twice the next closest os (iOS) which is ahead of symbian, windows Mobile/Phone, BlackBerry, etc... Apple, while still increasing in volume, is dropping in percentage compared to android.

~SB