This picture perfectly encapsulates how far Hyundai has come. It’s been a long journey from the cheap and cheerless Excel to the i30 (Elantra GT), a car that can stand on the same footing as the best compacts from Japan and Europe.
Hyundai’s baggage is now a distant memory for many, myself included, perhaps explaining why the automaker has felt confident enough to start pricing their cars directly against rivals. Their latest products, like the i30, have an impressive solidity and quality feel to them. Hyundai may still have some work to do in certain areas – their products are sometimes heavier and less fuel-efficient than rivals’, for example – but the entire Hyundai range is competitive.
As late as the 2000s, Hyundais were cars you offered with caveats – “It’s an okay car but get a good deal.” Now they no longer need to have a lower MSRP to be worth recommending. The i30 is a great example, being a member of the top tier of compacts. There’s chiselled, handsome European-influenced styling and a modern, elegant interior. There’s a comfortable ride and crisp handling, as well as an optional 1.6 turbo with 200 hp and a choice of six-speed manual or dual-clutch auto transmissions. As a bonus, the i30/Elantra GT follows Hyundai/Kia’s tradition of democratizing luxury features such as panoramic sunroofs and ventilated seats – such features are optional on the Hyundai but can’t be found on any Infiniti Q50, for example.
Let’s not forget either about Hyundai’s first hot hatch, the i30 N (there’s no Elantra GT N – North Americans get the Veloster N instead). Hyundai has knocked it out of the park at their first attempt in rivalling the VW GTi juggernaut, the i30 N receiving rave reviews thanks to its athletic handling and powerful 250 hp engine.
Contrast that with the Excel. This is an X2-series model, a restyled version of the X1 Excel that introduced the Hyundai brand to US consumers. But though it had some improvements, the disposable X2 still suffered from indifferent assembly, sloppy handling and a lack of refinement. In its favor, however, was a low, low price.
Hyundai may no longer be able to tout drastically lower retail prices but none of their cars today could ever be accused of being trashy and thrashy.
Related Reading:
Curbside Classic: 1987 Hyundai Excel – The Damn Near Deadly Sin
Curbside Classic: 2007 Hyundai Sonata – Hyundai Changes Its Tune And Sings A Sweeter Melody
The Hyundai (and Kia) line is now a mainstream product, and worthy of note. Coming from the “crap but it’s cheap” category to a 10-Best product in 20 years is amazing.
There are some other marques that may be poised to make such an ascent. My question is who?
Eastern Europe would have been my guess a few years ago, with Dacia, Tatra, Lada or someone I have not heard of but from the former soviet bloc being chief contender. However, any of them have either been snapped up by a rival or now have no realistic chance.
Asia might produce another one, but Tata and the Indian marques don’t seem willing or able to go outside their sphere of influence, and China is quite happy keeping domestic brands domestic. While the area is ripe for new plants for production, I don’t see many new marques making inroads internationally. Perhaps an EV will be the breakout for an international Chinese brand, but save for that, I don’t think that a plain old cheap ICE vehicle from China will ever be a hit outside of their country.
So is Hyundai the last to succeed under this model? Or is there another contender that I just don’t know about waiting in the wings?
The breakout of Chinese brands will happen when the local market is sated. There is still enormous demand for cars in China, as they are the ultimate status symbol.
China is a nation of uneven development. Cities like Shanghai and Beijing may seem wealthy, but driving a few kilometres to the west and this illusion is taken away.
Chinese need cheap cars if they want folks to drive. BYD is making cheap cars, but they do not meet North American standards for anything.
China is going big into EV’s. That’s where from where their breakthrough will come.
Skoda. Today they build truly good cars that offer great value for money.
Dacia is a Renault/Nissan avlue brand, just as Skoda is a VW Audi Group brand. Traditionally, Skodas were traditionally mildy restyled last-generation Audis. That does not seem to be be the case currently. VAG has made Skoda its sponsor for the Tour de France for the past couple years, so they are definitely not using Skoda as cast-off.
We’re more likely to see Renault than Dacia in the US market. IMHO, I’d be more excited about a return of Peugeot.
As for Chinese cars, my inkling is we’ll see the Chinese make inroads in the US market through brands they own like Volvo rather than seeing Geely-branded products. It would be interesting to see a Chinese interpretation of British luxury in the form of Roewe and MG.
You may be confusing Skoda with Seat. Skodas products seem to be restyled VWs (Superb/Passat, Octavia/Jetta, Fabia/Polo etc) while Seat had (has?) the Exeo which is a slightly restyled prior generation Audi A4.
mildy restyled last-generation Audis
No, that would be one-off Seat Exeo (2008-2013) which was rebadged Audi A4 B7 generation.
Skoda is like price-leading Chevrolet while Seat is like sporty and edgy Pontiac in Volkswagen portfolio. Their models are often replaced or updated at the same time as Volkswagen models. While they share same motors and platforms, their styling inside and outside are different from Volkswagen.
I’m not sure it can be overstated how impressive the strides Hyundai/Kia have made over a relatively short period of time. The auto industry is one of the most dog-eat-dog businesses out there, and succeeding takes real work, timing, and luck.
Yeah, their products tend to be heavier than the class leaders because of less sophisticated assembly methods, but they’re now not so much in the disposable, bottom-feeder, “it’s the only thing I could afford!” category like the original, craptacular Excel.
An associate of mine had a Hyundai Pony. Inexplicably, despite the problems he had with that car, he bought another. Two Ponies sitting in his driveway. Mercifully, one caught fire (he was in it but was OK), and the other disappeared from view shortly thereafter. In the early ’90s era of cheap Ladas, Ponies, and Le Cars, the Pony was another face in the crowd. Another associate had a Rabbit and drove that car merrily for years and years.
Excellent (no pun intended) to see these cars in proximity to each other!
1990s Hyundais are a nearly total blind spot for me. I vividly recall the X1 Excels (for better or worse), and then I guess Hyundais became so dang awful/boring/bland that I completely flushed them from my mind. I think I started noticing Hyundais again after the brand started improving in the 2000s.
Count me as another for whom these went from totally off the radar to my driveway (well it’s corporate sibling, anyhow).
Both Hyundai and Kia have been remarkably free on the whole from the “angry birds” school of design so prominent on Japanese cars lately. The styling of that i30 really floats my boat.
As for the old Excel, I think that Yugo sold a lot of those. The Yugo was $3995 while the Excel was $4995. I think you had to jump up to around $7k from there. Anyway, the well-known cheapness of the Yugu made that extra $1k look like a great investment.
I remember those days. Moving from a Yugo to an Excel was like going from really awful to just plain awful.
Had a friend in college who had a Cavalier Type 1o coupe which was replaced by a Hyundai Excel. The Cavalier was meh. The Excel was downright awful. The foothills of the Blue Ridge brought that poor Excel to it’s knees because it was so underpowered.
And then there was the Abobe for $179. 🙂
https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/adobe/n9492
Edit: I remember back in college hanging out in the dorm watching a rerun of that SNL episode with the girl I was dating at the time, and explaining to her that the car used to portray the “Adobe” was really a Renault, which I’m sure she found completely fascinating…
If I remember right the Mazda 323 and Corolla were low-6ks at the time (1986-7), Mitsubishi Colt just under $6k. The base Civic was high-6k.
Great catch, these two together. Haven’t seen one of these Excels in a while now.
It’s been amazing watching H-K climb the ropes from the cellar in the last 30 years. My brother traded in his 4-year-old base Santa Fe Sport for a new fully loaded one and it’s truly an amazing vehicle for a great price.
While H-K has attempted to match Toyota and Honda pricing, the reality in real-world pricing is easily a 20% discount. If I was 3-4 inches shorter I’d be all over a loaded Elantra GT.
Has there been a CC on Hyundai’s climb from the days of those $4995 Excels to today’s role as a significant, mainstream player and, more importantly, how they managed to do it?
How did they manage to do it? How did Tesla manage to do what it has done in one third of that time? It’s now the best selling premium car and one of the top 5 best selling sedans.
Hard work. Setting high goals.
Having ridden in many a first generation Pony taxi careening through the streets of Seoul in the early 80’s, and seeing the current level of sophistication in Hyundai, Kia and Genesis products, is just absolutely mind-blowing.
Brilliant photo, Mr S. Well spotted, and so unlikely.
For the information of CCer’s, our esteemed Mr Stopford lives in a part of Oz that’s been doing perfectly well in the nation’s 27 years of economic growth, but a place that somehow still has cars never seen any more in other cities in the south (Sydney, Melbourne). Anybody’s guess as to why that might be.
Again for the enlightenment of CCer’s, the old Hyundai pictured here was initially imported and sold by an ’80’s “entrepreneur”, one Mr Alan Bond Esq. He was a dodgy billionaire who was later – and most satisfyingly – jailed for fraud, “satisfyingly” because he was prosecuted for what he truly was. It sure didn’t help the image of the brand.
A mate had one just like this in ’94. Creaky, loose, noisy, slow, Soviet-level plastics indoors, it is hard to convey just how low this car could bring the art of dignified motoring.
Today, as this article says, Hyundai is rightly part of the normal and competitive choice a motorist might make.
Frankly, and despite my lack of a belief in deities of any persuasion, this amounts to a miracle. The church in Rome usually requires many, many years in excess of the 28 mentioned in the title here to prove miracles. Hyundai should show them books to prove that it can take a lot less.
I traveled 13,000 miles in six weeks on a cross country trip from Delaware with two of my friends in one of these during the summer of 1994. Same color as this one–it was a four speed and as I remember it had vinyl seats that we would stick to and those ridiculous seatbelts that attached to the door that were a response to passive restraint regulations. Also, had no AC–we had to occasionally drive at night during desert portions of our drive (e.g., Las Vegas to San Diego) to make it bearable. In terms of deciding to drive it, only 2 of us had a car–I had an 89 Mercury Tracer with a five speed, a much more refined car, but also without AC. We flipped a coin to see whose car we would use on the trip. My friend was not happy that he lost and he brought it up as a sore spot a few times on the trip. Despite this being a really cheap car, it served us well–no problems at all and I developed a soft spot for it.
I see some incredulous comments of Chinese cars. They don’t have a long way to be in the same league of mainstream brands. Some brands are already there.
Also, in the subject of Hyundai Kia, they were also forced to leave the lower priced segments because of rising labour costs in Korea.
Here is another good current Chinese offering.
That’s the sort of tidbit that might make for interesting reading on the rise of H-K (particularly as they moved into more up-market segments), seeming to be substantially more insightful than dismissively suggesting their fortunes were entirely due to “hard work” and “setting high goals”.
I went to a Kia dealership just to give every major brand a fair shake while looking for my current car. I found that to be the case. The cars they make are fine now, about even with every other automaker. Is it impressive? I guess, seeing as they made absolute garbage before. Even as recently as 2008, I’d say they were still bottom of the barrel transportation. Took them long enough to get their thumb out l say. I’m glad they are a decent brand now, but l still prefer my Mazda3.
Ca. 1997 I used to see a Hyundai Pony with Washington plates parked in a residential neighborhood near North Seattle Community College. I assume it was imported from Canada. I would have photographed it for the Cohort if CC had existed at the time.
I had a used 1990 Hyundai Excel sedan (with a trunk, not a hatchback) from summer 1994 to fall 1995. It was a blue GL model with power steering but manual windows and locks, and no air conditioning. That is, not that the air conditioning didn’t work, it didn’t have factory installed AC. Mechanically I knew it was based on a Mitsubishi Precis, but had Hyundai styling and details, The running gear (engine, transaxle, suspension, etc.) was reasonably solid, but a lot of things were cheap plastic and broke. Once I drove some friends out to lunch in it. When we parked one person closed the back door and the ashtray fell out of the door and onto the floor. Another time the heater vent actuator broke (in the middle of winter no less) and I couldn’t work the windshield defrost or interior heat. Once I wanted to change the oil and the hood stuck shut. It was so stuck shut after tugging on it the hood release lever came off in my hand. I traded it in on a 1990 Plymouth Laser that was a MUCH better car.
That said our friend’s 2015 Elantra has definitely changed my view on Hyundai. I’d even buy one, a SEDAN no less! 😉
They sure went up quick.
My brother used to have a BMW E46. It was a total money pit. In 2016 he got fed up and traded it in a new Kia Cee’d Sportwagon with a diesel and 6 speed. A great car so far