I was reading in Car and Driver today that the 2006 Sonata will probably be built in a new facility Hyundai is building/recently finished in Alabama!

Sorry Alabama - but the M-class is junk ... and it's not just b/c the reliability is bad.

Talk about incredible sinking feeling. There go the quality gains and, thus, the market share increases that have just now begun to make Hyundai a reasonable alternative to other manufacturers.

I was hoping that Hyundai would keep production in Korea. Maybe they can institute really comprehensive QC systems here in the States; systems that the Germans have so sloppily/greedily avoided.

Here's to hoping I guess!

M.

 

I agree. It's management. The Accord and Camry are built here and the previous generation Altimas are all great quality cars.
But if management doesn't provide a place where workers feel they are trying to build the best product or basically neglect quality just to build a car/truck they NEED, well you will have shoddy quality.
US built Import luxo American made cars/trucks
BMW Z3 now Z4
BMW X5
Mercedes Benz ML
Acura TL/CL (discontinued)
2004 Nissan Maxima
Infiniti QX4


Lexus does have a new RX 330 plant in Canada. I would LOVE why they did not choose the south like most of these car makers.

The solara is built here as the Tundra, both high quality cars. Is there a list of all import branded American made cars somewhere? MMarshall? SexySC?

 

The reason why Japanese+German automakers LOVE the south is because it isn't dominated by the UAW, only a handful of plants in the South are staffed by the UAW. IF Toyota or Honda built a plant like say, in Michigan or Ohio, the local UAW will be all over them

We'll see how Hyundai's first North American made car in years works out to be. And not everything Alabama makes on wheels is crap, an Hungarian-American bus maker, NABI has a plant in Anniston, and they make a very good bus, LA is a BIG customer of theirs.

 

Let's not forget that Hyundai's first product here in the U.S.....the 1986-87 Excel....was actually a Mitsubishi design. The same car was sold at Mitsubishi dealers as the Precis. The infamous car that got so many people mad at Hyundai was not even a Hyundai design to start with. Now Hyundai, which most people agree builds respectable cars today, feels it can do so even in U.S. plants......so I say let's not pass judgement here until we see what actually comes out of this plant and how well they hold up.

 

Depends on what what you mean by "Import"....legally it is % of parts content that determines a domestic vs. foreign car. But you mention "Branded"...so here is my list from what I know to be the case:

Mazda B-trucks.....redone Ford Rangers.
Mazda Navaho (now dropped).....A redone Ford Explorer Sport.
Mazda Tribute......a redone Ford Escape
Pontiac Vibe........a redoneToyota Matrix.
Chevrolet Aveo......a redone new-generation Daewoo Lanos.
Dodge Stratus / Chrysler Sebring ...a redone Mitsubishi Galant
Cadillac CTS / Catera / Saturn L series....a redone German Opel Vectra
Ford Focus....produced and sold all over the world
Toyota Cavalier....a redone Chevy Cavalier sold in Japan under the Toyota nameplate.
Chrysler Crossfire...a redone previous-generation Mercedes SLK without the trick roof.


There are also many foreign nameplates that are redone versions of OTHER foreign nameplates, but that is a whole other list.

 

You could also marginally add the Jag X-series and the Ford Contour / Mondeo, except that the Contour has been dropped from the U.S.market and the Jag has a major difference.........AWD.

 

Can you PLEASE point me to a definitive source that says that the new RWD GMs share a platform with the FWD? You bring this up constantly, and it's starting to become ridiculous.

"They designed the basic Sigma platform in Australia - by Holden in the fame of Commodore VT, then covered it with an edge-cutting "Art-and-Science" design originated in Evoq prototype, installed a nice Opel V6 into the engine bay together with a Getrag 5M or a world-class 5A ... lastly, and most important, the chassis and suspensions tuning were carried out in Germany's Nurburgring race track."

"...the CTS has a far better chance of succeeding than any of its forebears. Unlike them, it is not an existing car converted into a Cadillac. Rather, as the first product built on GM's new Sigma rear-drive platform, it was designed from the ground up both to be a Cadillac and to provide the same levels of dynamics that characterize the best of its European competition..."


The Catera was a clone of the Opel Omega.
The Saturn L-Series is indeed a Vectra: "The L-series was developed in Ruesselsheim, Germany, in the hands of Opel engineers." It also shares the platform with the last-generation Saab 900/9-3.

I don't know where you got your info from, but the Sigma platform is new and RWD, not some dual-purpose legacy chassis update that can be suited to either FWD or RWD.

The CTS, Catera, and L-Series are not related.

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by wantAnewLex
[B]Can you PLEASE point me to a definitive source that says that the new RWD GMs share a platform with the FWD? You bring this up constantly, and it's starting to become ridiculous.

Sharing a platform does not mean that you have identically-rebadged versions of the same car. Obviously the L-300, having FWD and a Saturn-type space frame, is quite different in many respects from the Catera platform, which was unibody and RWD, and the newer CTS, which is RWD with an AWD SRX variant and perhaps AWD CTS versions to follow. The CTS platform obviously has some differences from the earlier Catera, which also was derived from GM of Australia. MY point was that just because you share a common root does not mean that root was exactly the same for all the variants. I don't know what you mean..or want...by "definitive source", but much of what I know about these cars comes from Car and Driver, Road and Track, AUTOMOBILE, AUTOWEEK, Consumer Reports, auto weeklys, and my own personal evaulation. You may disagree with how I classify these cars, but my postings are certainly not ridiculous.

 

I've seen spy pics of the 2006 Sonata & dosen't look too bad. Does anybody have any performance specs for engine size, horsepower & torque figures? I hope it's a huge improvement over the current generation car!

 

it's about time..... now I'll be able to get a hyundai as a daily driver.... I've had the elantra with the 4g63 engine and it was reliable and quick. I think it's only gotten better i hope