You yourself said:
I noticed that you mentioned Lexus but didn't mention Jaguar when it came to "rank".
I?m all in for competition in a segment in wich Mercedes and BMW charge customers way too much for way too little. But ... the fact they won?t bring this car to europe (where they are rather sucessful with their smaller cars - wich do earn quite a lot of critics praise too) speaks volumes to me. If that were really up for competing against VWs Passat, the Citroen C8 or the skoda Superb, People WOULD buy that (a hyundai badge is not really considered worse than skoda here). But they will have their reasons for not taking on the Skoda Superb ... and like I said ... that says it all.
[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DfExqa6NPE[/YOUTUBE]
Well, it's just significant that Lexus has the most success in markets, which aren't exactly known for their highly demanding customer behaviour...
We were demanding enough to reject the C-class hatchback and 3-series hatchback, which were utter crap.
We were also demanding enough to reject the X-Type which you Europeans apparently weren't.
'value for money'
In my experience, so called "value for money" tends to entail NO value for money.
People look a a product that's slightly cheaper than the market leader and think "oh, this phone also has 3g, hsdpa, camera & gps" or something like that.
They compare the specs, and they think they are somehow tricking "the man" by buying a cheaper product with nominally the same features as the more expensive one. But then then manual will be in engrish, the product will break every 4 months, and even though there's a 2 year warranty, you have to waste 3 weeks every time replacing it. And the ergnomics are just plain horrible.
The whole budget mentality so prevalent in everyone's minds is just such bullshit. I'd rather pay twice as much, and get a good proper product.
There's a reason why a Rolls Royce costs 3 times as much as an A8 - it's not because it's 1s faster 0-100, it's just because all things considered, it's 3 times as good, and if you have the money for it you should get one.
I say, either buy something you're going to be happy with, or don't buy at all - but whatever you do, don't buy the cheapest option from the highest category you can afford.
People have unlearned to value things. I call it the "Bl?d ist geil" mentality.
For our non-German forum members: There are two big electronic market chains competing against each other here. One is Media Markt, the other one is Saturn.
Media Markt's slogan has been for long: "Ich bin doch nicht bl?d" ("I'm not that daft")
Saturn's slogan was: "Geiz ist geil" ("Cheap is cool")
So as a reaction that kind of electronic supermarkets have become known as "Bl?d-ist-geil-M?rkte" ("Daft is cool markets").
There is also an old merchant saying: "Rabatte, Leute, lasst euch sagen, wurden vorher draufgeschlagen", meaning that when you get a rebate or if something has been lowered in price in a sale, it probably was overpriced before. The trick is as old as there are merchants on Earth but people still fall for it.
Look out for stuff that is steady in price and never appears in a sale. That's a good quality indicator, because producers, merchants and customers know it's worth the price.
I't a hyundai....its crap bought by people who have absolutly no idea what a car is, how it works and how to drive it properly....why are we even having this discussion? nobody with 1 gram of petrolheadness in his body is ever gonna buy a hyundai, no matter how good (they claim) their latest box of plastic and drywallscrews is, it will never have something every car worth talking about must have : soul.
And there's also the 'value for money' aspect to the US market, which doesn't seem to be all that prevalent in Europe - Europeans being all about the badge on the nose, apparently.
Well, that's kind of a loaded question because they never will deserve a chance because of their illustrious history of making shit.Newsflash: not everybody is a car enthusiast. If nobody is willing to give Hyundai the chance when it deserves it, will it ever be taken seriously as a carmaker?
I carefully avoided using that word because I knew this would happen.Lastly, "soul?"