And then Hyundai management pulled a leaf directly out of Lee
Iacocca's old playbook from the time he engineered the Chrysler
turnaround - and did him one better: They offered consumers a
10-year power train warranty. It was twice as long as any other
carmaker's warranty.
They understood perfectly that the big, boisterous U.S. market was
where big money could be made. And the new warranty was a simple
guarantee to that market that Hyundai's new talk about quality was
no joke - even though it came from one of the longest-reigning
clown acts in the auto trade.
"It was no small feat to figure out how to make it right," says
Bruce Bezlowski, assistant research scientist at the University of
Michigan Office for the Study of Automotive Transportation. "To
[Hyundai's] credit, they were able to learn quickly and adjust
quickly. I've seen very few companies turn around as quickly as
they have."
In the space of one year, from 2003 to 2004, Hyundai jumped from
tenth place to second place in J.D. Power's initial quality
surveys. Making that kind of leap requires managers who are willing
to learn and who can be relentless at teaching the rest of the
organization how to improve.
"In the last 20 years, they've gone from dead last to a dead heat
with Toyota," says Steven Szakaly, an economist with the Center for
Automotive Research in
Ann Arbor,
Michigan. "Every single product
life cycle, they've made some improvement. It's an amazing company.
Just the growth and improvement in quality is amazing."
Hyundai's reward: Some of the best press a car manufacturer has
ever seen. Consider the reviews when it introduced the new Sonata,
made in
Alabama. Dan Neil, the Pulitzer prize-winning auto
columnist for the
Los Angeles Times, wrote: "Stravinsky said lesser
artists borrow, great artists steal. Hyundai is turning out to be
the Rembrandt of affordable transportation."