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The Sonata turbo is no slouch either.
Read this article fellas.
here is an auto maker that appears to have figured it out!
I've highlighted the more interesting points.
Esquire 2011 Auto Exec of the Year
A conversation with John Krafcik of Hyundai Motor America
BY SAM SMITH
More from this author
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Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times/Redux
Five years ago, I stood in a parking garage in Ann Arbor, sweat pouring off my nose, squirming in my shoes, when John Krafcik, then Hyundai's vice-president of product development, brandished a ruler. A few months prior, I had driven one of Krafcik's babies, the then-new 2007 Santa Fe SUV. I wrote a little capsule review of it for Automobile, capping it off with what I thought was a clever touch: The car was good but not great, and a badge on the trunk was crooked. I sloppily connected the dots, making this grand proclamation about how that badge echoed the company's not-quite-there-yet march toward building decent cars.
That, of course, is when Krafcik got on a plane and hunted me down. He flew clean across the country from California to Michigan. He somehow dug up the very car I tested and asked to meet with me. Not my editor, not the woman who ran the magazine. Me.
He had the ruler. He crouched down, put it against the badge, and began talking about sixteenths of an inch, angling the ruler this way and that. Then, his demonstration over — I'm still convinced the badge was straightened before he confronted me — he began shooting off questions: What did I think of the car? The company? Where were both headed? Most of all, why did I write what I wrote? Why? Why? Why?! This wasn't an act or a job. John Krafcik really cared about making good cars.
Krafcik, 49, is now CEO of Hyundai America, and during his tenure the company has finished its transformation from automotive joke — Jay Leno once proclaimed that Hyundais were so worthless that filling the gas tank would double their value — to solid, no-frills carmaker to full-fledged juggernaut: Hyundai sold more than 500,000 cars last year — more than Volkswagen — and is now the sixth-best-selling brand in America. With the Genesis and Equus luxury sedans, it successfully tapped a market everyone assumed was patently untappable, and in February of this year, a data firm announced that Hyundai's Sonata sedan, a $20,145 front-wheel-drive four-door, was the most shopped-for vehicle in the country. But more than success, what amazes is the momentum. While other giants founder, May 2011 marked the fifth consecutive month that Hyundai cranked out record-breaking American sales: The company moved 59,214 cars, a whopping 21 percent more than last year and more than any other month in its history.
For all this. For helping make Hyundais dependable, elegant, even lustworthy, John Krafcik is Esquire's Auto Executive of the Year.
SAM SMITH: Your first car job in the mid-1980s was at NUMMI, the car plant where GM and Toyota collaborated. How did that shape your ideas about the industry?
JOHN KRAFCIK: I had a great boss, this guy Yoshimitsu Ogihara. He taught me that if you have two things, you explore their differences so you can make them even better. He sent me to Oklahoma City, where GM built A-body cars like the Buick Century. He said, "Okay, John-san, you go to plant, you make one-page report."
The place was a disaster. I saw cars going down the line without parts in the right place, I saw acres and acres of cars that needed repair. I saw people sleeping in cardboard boxes. So I wrote that, and he said, "Oh, good, John-san. Now I send you to Toyota City to write one-page report."
That one-page report was like, as kids would say, OMFG! They had three parking spaces for repair vehicles. I asked Ogihara-san about this: "What happens if there's a big problem? You would have to shut the whole line down." His answer was solemn — "Yes."
SS: Then beginning in 1990, you spent 14 years at Ford, eventually as chief engineer for the Expedition and Navigator. How did that compare?
JK: We came up with an idea for unibody crossovers. One of the finance guys said, "These are great ideas, but they would compete too much with our current set of products." That was my first lesson in why big companies fail.
SS: Was it always this way — the finance guys running things?
JK: It was kinda built-in. At Ford, when you launch a product, you're basically at the assembly plant for the last year of the product-development process. The manufacturing guys come in, and it's "Oh, you need to do this and you need to do that to make it easier to build." The design that you signed off on in the studio kind of went away, because it had to be assembled by a blind 82-year-old woman — that was the ergonomic guideline. You'd add $870 and 36 pounds to every car. It was very, very frustrating.
SS: How does that compare with Hyundai?
JK: We embrace really late change in the production process. For example, the first year I got here, we were seven months away from the auto show when I finally saw the Sonata for the first time. But the 17-inch aluminum wheel really bugged me. Really nice, great wide spoke, old-fashioned, clip-on wheel weight — but it wasn't a Euroflange. So in this design review, I said to the chairman or the vice-chairman: "I know it's late, but we should see if we could get a Euroflange for a model change." The next review, like a month later, the car had Euroflange wheels on it. And it launched with Euro-flange wheels. Since then, part of my journey has been embracing this amazing capacity for late change, and using it to our advantage.
SS: What's your biggest challenge at Hyundai?
JK: Most buyers didn't aspire to put a Hyundai in their driveway. They kinda compromised and got one. We've really been focused on giving consumers aspirational reasons to buy the car, as far as design, fun to drive, and all that.
SS: Like what?
JK: The industry assumes that to sell premium cars, you need premium showrooms in premium facilities and big investments. And you put special care and specially trained people in these facilities. But our approach is: Let's put 'em all together, and we'll sell the good ones here, and we'll sell the lower-cost ones here, but we'll train everybody who's selling all these cars to the same standard.
So Genesis and Equus for us are, in a way, a Trojan horse — not to the premium segment but to higher customer satisfaction for the whole rest of the lineup. That's something nobody's really figured out yet.
SS: Who are your target customers?
JK: There are basically three kinds of car buyers in the U. S. A third say, "Oh, yeah, I know those guys, I'd buy one." A second third could be persuaded to buy a Hyundai. The final third is on the other side, "Ahh, Hyundai. Eh."
So we talk to the first two groups. The haters kind of decrease on their own. And with the first group, we have a five-and-a-half percent market share. We have enough people to sell to to last us a long time.
SS: Are you pushing hard to expand that market share?
JK: No. We're basically self-capping, and that comes from the very highest levels. We're all aligned around this — job one is quality. We're not trying to grow sales or share, we're not going to add capacity for the U. S. market.
SS: Is it true that an Elantra typically has about four days on the lot before it goes ...
JK: Yeah, four days to turn. Dealers would love more cars, but we don't want a quality issue. So we're really being thoughtful and careful. If we add production, it's going to be a little bit here, a little bit there, it's not going to be some massive jump.
SS: Your two cars, a Caterham — basically a Lotus-designed go-cart — and a Porsche 911. Why?
JK: The Caterham is a car that was nearly perfect from the start: It's light and brilliant, it's still kind of unchallenged. It weighs 1,100 pounds, perfect steering, perfect dynamics; it's my steering reference point. It came out nearly perfect, and there were some refinements, but they didn't really change the car.
The 911, it's kind of the opposite. It really shouldn't be as good as it is. Because it's got this big, huge engine, an awful polar moment of inertia and all that other stuff, but it's a brilliant car! And it's a great example of continuous German methodical refinement — making something that shouldn't be good into something that's amazing. So I like those two bookends: This one came out perfect and was never really improved upon; this one was okay, but it just got better.
Read this article fellas.
here is an auto maker that appears to have figured it out!
I've highlighted the more interesting points.
Esquire 2011 Auto Exec of the Year
A conversation with John Krafcik of Hyundai Motor America
BY SAM SMITH
More from this author
SHARE
Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times/Redux
Five years ago, I stood in a parking garage in Ann Arbor, sweat pouring off my nose, squirming in my shoes, when John Krafcik, then Hyundai's vice-president of product development, brandished a ruler. A few months prior, I had driven one of Krafcik's babies, the then-new 2007 Santa Fe SUV. I wrote a little capsule review of it for Automobile, capping it off with what I thought was a clever touch: The car was good but not great, and a badge on the trunk was crooked. I sloppily connected the dots, making this grand proclamation about how that badge echoed the company's not-quite-there-yet march toward building decent cars.
That, of course, is when Krafcik got on a plane and hunted me down. He flew clean across the country from California to Michigan. He somehow dug up the very car I tested and asked to meet with me. Not my editor, not the woman who ran the magazine. Me.
He had the ruler. He crouched down, put it against the badge, and began talking about sixteenths of an inch, angling the ruler this way and that. Then, his demonstration over — I'm still convinced the badge was straightened before he confronted me — he began shooting off questions: What did I think of the car? The company? Where were both headed? Most of all, why did I write what I wrote? Why? Why? Why?! This wasn't an act or a job. John Krafcik really cared about making good cars.
Krafcik, 49, is now CEO of Hyundai America, and during his tenure the company has finished its transformation from automotive joke — Jay Leno once proclaimed that Hyundais were so worthless that filling the gas tank would double their value — to solid, no-frills carmaker to full-fledged juggernaut: Hyundai sold more than 500,000 cars last year — more than Volkswagen — and is now the sixth-best-selling brand in America. With the Genesis and Equus luxury sedans, it successfully tapped a market everyone assumed was patently untappable, and in February of this year, a data firm announced that Hyundai's Sonata sedan, a $20,145 front-wheel-drive four-door, was the most shopped-for vehicle in the country. But more than success, what amazes is the momentum. While other giants founder, May 2011 marked the fifth consecutive month that Hyundai cranked out record-breaking American sales: The company moved 59,214 cars, a whopping 21 percent more than last year and more than any other month in its history.
For all this. For helping make Hyundais dependable, elegant, even lustworthy, John Krafcik is Esquire's Auto Executive of the Year.
SAM SMITH: Your first car job in the mid-1980s was at NUMMI, the car plant where GM and Toyota collaborated. How did that shape your ideas about the industry?
JOHN KRAFCIK: I had a great boss, this guy Yoshimitsu Ogihara. He taught me that if you have two things, you explore their differences so you can make them even better. He sent me to Oklahoma City, where GM built A-body cars like the Buick Century. He said, "Okay, John-san, you go to plant, you make one-page report."
The place was a disaster. I saw cars going down the line without parts in the right place, I saw acres and acres of cars that needed repair. I saw people sleeping in cardboard boxes. So I wrote that, and he said, "Oh, good, John-san. Now I send you to Toyota City to write one-page report."
That one-page report was like, as kids would say, OMFG! They had three parking spaces for repair vehicles. I asked Ogihara-san about this: "What happens if there's a big problem? You would have to shut the whole line down." His answer was solemn — "Yes."
SS: Then beginning in 1990, you spent 14 years at Ford, eventually as chief engineer for the Expedition and Navigator. How did that compare?
JK: We came up with an idea for unibody crossovers. One of the finance guys said, "These are great ideas, but they would compete too much with our current set of products." That was my first lesson in why big companies fail.
SS: Was it always this way — the finance guys running things?
JK: It was kinda built-in. At Ford, when you launch a product, you're basically at the assembly plant for the last year of the product-development process. The manufacturing guys come in, and it's "Oh, you need to do this and you need to do that to make it easier to build." The design that you signed off on in the studio kind of went away, because it had to be assembled by a blind 82-year-old woman — that was the ergonomic guideline. You'd add $870 and 36 pounds to every car. It was very, very frustrating.
SS: How does that compare with Hyundai?
JK: We embrace really late change in the production process. For example, the first year I got here, we were seven months away from the auto show when I finally saw the Sonata for the first time. But the 17-inch aluminum wheel really bugged me. Really nice, great wide spoke, old-fashioned, clip-on wheel weight — but it wasn't a Euroflange. So in this design review, I said to the chairman or the vice-chairman: "I know it's late, but we should see if we could get a Euroflange for a model change." The next review, like a month later, the car had Euroflange wheels on it. And it launched with Euro-flange wheels. Since then, part of my journey has been embracing this amazing capacity for late change, and using it to our advantage.
SS: What's your biggest challenge at Hyundai?
JK: Most buyers didn't aspire to put a Hyundai in their driveway. They kinda compromised and got one. We've really been focused on giving consumers aspirational reasons to buy the car, as far as design, fun to drive, and all that.
SS: Like what?
JK: The industry assumes that to sell premium cars, you need premium showrooms in premium facilities and big investments. And you put special care and specially trained people in these facilities. But our approach is: Let's put 'em all together, and we'll sell the good ones here, and we'll sell the lower-cost ones here, but we'll train everybody who's selling all these cars to the same standard.
So Genesis and Equus for us are, in a way, a Trojan horse — not to the premium segment but to higher customer satisfaction for the whole rest of the lineup. That's something nobody's really figured out yet.
SS: Who are your target customers?
JK: There are basically three kinds of car buyers in the U. S. A third say, "Oh, yeah, I know those guys, I'd buy one." A second third could be persuaded to buy a Hyundai. The final third is on the other side, "Ahh, Hyundai. Eh."
So we talk to the first two groups. The haters kind of decrease on their own. And with the first group, we have a five-and-a-half percent market share. We have enough people to sell to to last us a long time.
SS: Are you pushing hard to expand that market share?
JK: No. We're basically self-capping, and that comes from the very highest levels. We're all aligned around this — job one is quality. We're not trying to grow sales or share, we're not going to add capacity for the U. S. market.
SS: Is it true that an Elantra typically has about four days on the lot before it goes ...
JK: Yeah, four days to turn. Dealers would love more cars, but we don't want a quality issue. So we're really being thoughtful and careful. If we add production, it's going to be a little bit here, a little bit there, it's not going to be some massive jump.
SS: Your two cars, a Caterham — basically a Lotus-designed go-cart — and a Porsche 911. Why?
JK: The Caterham is a car that was nearly perfect from the start: It's light and brilliant, it's still kind of unchallenged. It weighs 1,100 pounds, perfect steering, perfect dynamics; it's my steering reference point. It came out nearly perfect, and there were some refinements, but they didn't really change the car.
The 911, it's kind of the opposite. It really shouldn't be as good as it is. Because it's got this big, huge engine, an awful polar moment of inertia and all that other stuff, but it's a brilliant car! And it's a great example of continuous German methodical refinement — making something that shouldn't be good into something that's amazing. So I like those two bookends: This one came out perfect and was never really improved upon; this one was okay, but it just got better.