Tigers and Cranes

Lexus, and to lesser extent Infiniti and Acura are a well known success story in the automotive world. They seemed to have come out of nowhere, establishing a Japanese luxury brand while the traditional German manufacturers were guffawing at the audacity and apparent foolishness of these Japanese luxury upstarts.

“Hey, Ingo, did you hear? Toyota ist making ein luxury kar!”
“HAR har har! Ja, Dis ist ridiculous! We have been making ze Ultimate Driving machine for fifty years! Ve haf nothink to fear from ze Japanese.”

Well, no one is laughing now, as some of the best luxury cars are coming from Japan, and as an evidence of their success, Lexus is now being sold in Japan(previously the marque did not exist in Japan).

Not all Japanese car manufacturers have been successful at establishing an upmarket brand in America; Mazda had a go with “Amanti” division, but it was stillborn, presumably, because financials didn’t make sense.

So should we be laughing when Hyundai says it’s going to start selling a luxury sedan in America? The vehicle, for now, is called “Genesis”, and is the first rear wheel driven, V-8 sedan from a Korean car maker. V-8 is significant, since most snobbish luxury car buyers don’t take a sedan seriously unless the hood has 8 cylinders stuffed in it. Witness the incredibly slow selling Acura RL, with its V-6 being left in the dust by Lexus LS series with its big honkin’ V-8. Never mind that RL has an ass-kicking 290 horse power V-6, nor the super SH handling thingie, as well as my personal sybaritic favorite, motorized window shades and sound system that rattles my fillings. Damn fine car, but for most people, no V-8, no cigar.

So Hyundai takes a bold gamble, following in the footsteps of brands like Toyota and Nissan by introducing its V-8 sedan with 4.6L engine, 6 speed auto tranny, achieving 0-60mph under six seconds. Of course, the interior will have all the leather trimmings and neat electronic gizmos.

So that’s that. But also from Korea comes this nifty little car, purported to be the country’s first “Supercar”, called Proto Spirra. Claimed performance is 0-100kmh in 4.4 seconds (I suppose that might mean 0-60 in 4.1 sec?) with a top speed of 305 km/h. With a mid-mounted 4.6L V-8, as well as the scissor door, this is the type of car I’d like to see coming out of Korea more often.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 16th, 2007 at 11:15 pm and is filed under korea. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.