Every now and then the Koreans and the Japanese come up with a car you actually consider buying.
But strangely enough those are all individual pieces:
- Either the follow-up model is completely redesigned again (seems like the Asian mentality likes to do it all over again in a different way all the time), so you cannot make out any reationship with the predecessor.
- Or there is no follow-up model at all despite the success and cult status the car has achieved during its production period. That's not exactly how you bind people to you.
Consistency is the keyword. For some reason Asian carmakers seem to be unable to do a consistent development of a car model over the years. At some point it looks like they get bored with it, throw it all over board and start with something new -- or forget about the thing completely. Strange for people who are all about traditions.
I'm sure many here can name Japanese cars, for which they would have loved to see development and/or follow-up models. But they never came.
Why? It's like they're always working on deliberately destroying their ideas and successes, instead of establishing them more and more for the future.
This way they will never achieve the status and recognition of European and (some) American car makers. The inconstistency prevents it. They will always be seen as mass producers of boring cars.
Honestly: I was really surprised, when Nissan revived the Z series (with something that of course had nothing in common with the old Z cars) and then replaced the 350Z with a similar looking car!!!.
"Wow", I thought, "They actually tried to keep the philosophy this time and went for steady improvement".
Maybe, just maybe this time they can stick to it and resist the temptation to throw away, what they achieved, for something new in a few years.
But frankly I doubt it.