Hyundai brags about crushing 2000 cars in new campaign

Has anyone seen the Hyundai print ad that claims “We built over 2000 Sonatas and then crushed them in the name of quality” and shows stacks of crushed cars?

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m4PRN/is_2007_Sept_7/ai_n19504891

"The intent was to pull consumers into a new understanding of the automotive world – to challenge consumers’ thoughts about what is, and should be, “standard” in the automotive industry.

“The Hyundai brand has an opportunity to define itself in the eyes of the consumer,” said Jeff Goodby, co-chairman of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners. “We feel that the campaign will close the huge gap between the reality of Hyundai vehicles and the perceptions that consumers have about the brand.”

Yup, they definitely changed my perceptions of Hyundai!

I bought an 06 Sonata off lease this past spring. I have to say it wasn’t my first choice for vehicles. I was looking at Altimas and Accords, etc. But when I looked at the Sonata I was really impressed. I guess back in 2000 they recruited 7 engineers from Honda to transform their cars. It worked.

Since I live in the midwest you get the “Buy American” thing pretty hard from the locals in small towns. I can safely tell them that every piece (or nearly every piece) of this car was built by an American worker in Alabama.

If you’re looking for something to fly under the radar with, the Sonata is a good choice.

Was it Kia or Hyundai that compared itself to lux cars like the land rover and BMWs in a previous campaign?

Some of my friends hated that, thinking that Hyundai is trying to climb higher than what it’s capable of.

I thought it was just another way to show that their customers are getting more for what their cars were sold for.

At last year’s Detroit autoshow, I paid special attention on the interior of cars. hyundai and Kia was pretty nice and sensible. Kia even had a little hook on the passenger side of the middle console for bagged items. I was pleasantly surprised because I had the exact same idea a while ago.

Anyways, American cars had absolutely horrible fit and finish inside or outside of the car. The Japanese cars fell short of expectation as well.

It was Hyundai… with Kelsey Grammer doing the voice over…

Funny… I thought it was Side Show Bob.

cg: I just want to check, how did this ad change your perception of Hyundai? Did it make you think they had higher quality or did it scare you with the useless destruction of so many cars? Also, if anyone finds an image of this, I would love to see it.

The answer lies in where I posted it.

If fit and finish is your bag, as it ought to be, I would check out the Jetta for nice finish on a cheap car.

And as for KIA, I am afraid that seeing one torn in half after hitting a tree was a big factor in not even considering one. Something about being a former emergency responder really tends to bias you vehicle choices.

cg: It’s kinda weird isn’t it. I don’t remember it being big news when Mazda and Nissan were starting to reduce their amount of prototypes in the late 1980’s because of advanced computer simulations. Those were truly big advances in green design.

I guess it comes down to consumer perception though. Most people think that quality is higher when a human hand-makes something, like a Ferrari. However, the truth is Ferrari has the same kind of computer controlled welding and assembly equipment that is used through-out the industry. Ferrari though, perpetuates the myth that their cars are built by hand.

I guess the same goes for quality. An ad showing your 500 CAD jockeys doing computer stress analysis on your new designs just isn’t as synonymous with quality as showing 2000 wrecked prototypes.

While it’s true that hand-made doesn’t equal to higher quality, Ferrari goes to the extreme to use technology to examine the quality that they claimed to have.

You may want to check out this documentary by National Geographic “Ultimate Factories” link . They have an episode on Ferrari Factory. It’s impressive, but I think BMW does similar procedures on their high end cars as well. I’m sure all companies that produces high-end cars will do the same, if not more.

If the crushing was done only after crash testing the cars…then I am impressed and thankfull. As they have had a rap from the insurance instatute pre-2003 as being one of the worst crash rated brands on the US roads. If you look at ads the new Mercedes ad says they crashed (well I forget how many) cars as well…“Because we promised you a Mercedes”.

I am sure this is not that uncommon, especially since I have a great uncle who worked for Chrysler for 30 yrs as an engineer, the last 5 of the last 10 were spent evaluating crash test cars to determin were crush pannels and break points needed to be added/redesigned. I asked him about utilizing FEA and his response was “Even after advanced modeling and FEA, he said that no computer model could predict the way a car reacts during a crash.”

And since they were crushed they are going to a recycler.

Wow, 9 replies and only Mr-914 picked up on why I posted this.

Is no one outraged by this waste? Is it really necessary?

Even medical devices are “limited released” to work out the bugs–we don’t make thousands of them just to trash them. (I should point out that the photos showed them crushed as-is–no effort to separate the materials like tires from metal.)

I actually clicked onthis post to see if it was about the waste or the “committment to quality”. Even if they recycled everything - the energy and waste used to produce them in the first place is terrible.

And speaking of Kelsey Grammer voiceovers.

I swear I heard McDreamy doing a car commercial last night (the wife makes me watch that show - I swear…)

cg: That’s why I asked. I figured, “I must be the only one picking up on the environmental catastrophe in this”. Ha! That’s a design forum for you;)

I’m kind of outraged, but at the end of the day, this is how products are improved. If it weren’t for patents and institutional knowledge, there wouldn’t be a need.

uh huh…I betcha know what happened at the end of The Bachelor too :wink:

I caught what you pitched here…but I guess I wasn’t too taken aback by it. Those kinds of numbers aren’t out of scope for a car company to “waste” in crash tests, etc. At least not from the perspective of getting statistically good data.

The fact that they’re squished as is and not dismantled for recycling is definitely most disturbing.

yeah, burn, I totally missed that, and I call myself green…

they did 2,000 crash tests. to me that means the vehicles have been tested and re-engineered to be very safe. 2,000 is a small percentage anyway…

There isn’t proof that they didn’t recycle those 2000 cars after they were done with them.

I’m not saying I agree with what they did, but you can see both sides of the coin here.

Besides their manufacturing facility is a case-study in efficient waste reducing mass-production methods.

http://www.hmmausa.com/

next time I design a lamp, is it ok for me to build two thousand of them and smash them into a wall, as long as I recycle whats left of them?