Hyundai has today announced that it will unveil an all-new concept car at the upcoming Geneva Motor Show 2010. In a press release, sent to us with a sketch of the concept, Hyundai stated that the car, dubbed the i-flow, will ‘pioneer a new look for a D-segment sedan’.

Hyundai i-flow – the next Sonata? So quickly?

The new look being refered to is dubbed ‘fluidic sculpture’ in the press release, but it is interesting that Hyundai is debuting a new D-segment concept having only recently launched the new Sonata YF. Is the firm looking that far into the future that they are already preparing the YF’s  successor?

… but Sonata YF has just only been launched!

Sharing centre stage with the i-flow will be the next generation Tucson, set to go on sale across Europe during spring. Additionally, Hyundai will also take the opportunity to showcase the latest developments of its BlueDrive programme, an implementation of environmentally friendly technologies in similar vein to Merc’s BlueEFFICIENCY, or BMW’s EfficientDynamics.

Hyundai Tucson

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Pictures: Official Hyundai release.

Official Press Release by Hyundai Sime-Darby Motors Sdn Bhd

A recent charity expedition by 20 employees of Hyundai-Sime Darby Motors Sdn Bhd (HSDM) brought cheers to 30 Semai families in Ulu Slim, Perak.

This was the first Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activity organized by HSDM for its employees. The group of 20 employees set out for Ulu Slim in five units of Santa Fe 2.2 Turbo Diesel in the morning and arrived at the Orang Asli settlement by noon.

Group Photo with Orang Asli Ulu Slim

The HSDM employees brought with them provisions of essential food items to cater to the needs of the 30 Semai families. Children at the Orang Asli settlement were then treated to finger food and snacks.

Dennis Ho, MD of HSDM presenting a goody bag to a family representative of Orang Asli Ulu Slim

While at Ulu Slim, employees of HSDM also took the opportunity to put the Santa Fe 2.2 Turbo Diesel to the test on an off-road terrain nearby, including hill climbing, river and bridge crossing as well as going down the slope.

The charity work, plus the test-drive session, was an enriching experience for the employees who found it to be fun and fulfilling. Based on the success of the first charity work, HSDM plans to organize more activities of a similar nature in future and especially for owners of Santa Fe.

Group Photo with the Santa Fe

Official Press Release from Hyundai-Sime Darby Motors Sdn Bhd

As one of the Official Partners of the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa™, Hyundai Motor Company unveiled its 2010 FIFA World Cup™ micro-website on Feb. 1st to mark the official start of its FIFA World Cup™ marketing activities.

Visitors to the site will have the opportunity to learn about 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa™ and Hyundai’s online and offline promotional events, such as winning tickets, submission for the Be There With Hyundai Slogan contest which the winning slogan of the contest triumphs the chance for the slogan to be wrapped on the respective national team bus, playing online games and more.

Hyundai will also provide a link in the official website of the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa™ (www.FIFA.com) that leads to its slogan contest site 「Be There with Hyundai」. This is the first of its kind for a sponsor, facilitating one-click access to fifaworldcup.hyundai.com, Hyundai’s newly opened micro-site for its World Cup marketing activities.

In addition to the online marketing activities, Hyundai will display some of its top vehicles at the respective stadiums during the games, including the all-new Sonata and Tucson ix (badged as the `ix35’ in some regions). To bring soccer fans closer to the FIFA World Cup™, various promotional events are in store such as the Fan of the Match, which gives one lucky winner the chance to be named best fan at the match.

Hyundai is confident its World Cup marketing activities will create a synergy effect that will help the company enhance its brand image, adding to the momentum of the successful sponsorship of 2006 FIFA World Cup Germany™.

Hyundai is one of the strongest corporate supporters of football in the world having served as the official sponsor of the 2002 FIFA World Cup Korea / Japan™ and the 2006 FIFA World Cup Germany™ as well as many other FIFA tournaments. The company has extended its strategic sponsorship agreement with FIFA to cover the 2010 and 2014 FIFA World Cup™. Under the agreement, Hyundai Motor Company will enjoy main sponsorship rights for all FIFA events, including the rights to use logos, emblems as well as signage display in the stadiums.

The site, http://fifaworldcup.hyundai.com, will be open throughout the 2010 FIFA Word Cup™ games.

Hyundai Motor Company yesterday published their official Korean domestic and worldwide sales figures for the entire calendar year (CY) of 2009, in addition to that of December 2009.

Year-on-year, December 2009 sees a 34.4% increase in overall sales compared to December 2008. While overseas sales rose by 23.4%, tax benefits from the Korean government to spur purchases of new cars saw an astonishing 82.2% year-on-year growth for their domestic market.

Also fuelling their growth is strong sales of their SUV models, which in overseas markets, outnumber the sale of Hyundai passenger cars.

Effects of the aforementioned tax incentives from the Korean government were also obvious when overall sales figures for the year are analysed. Whereas overseas sales grew by a modest 8.7%, domestic sales went up by 23.1%. Exports went down by 17.1%, but that’s because Hyundai’s overseas plants are gradually taking over manufacturing operations for international markets.

Hyundai Equus

From total global sales of 2.78 million cars in 2008, things went up by 11.6% to 3.11 million for 2009, marking the first time that the company’s year sales crossed the 3-million-cars threshold.

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Beginning next year, customers of the Hyundai i30 will have the option of specifying their car with what they call, no, I kid you not, the M-Sport bodykit. Available for booking from 1 Jan 2010 onwards, the first 50 takers of the i30 in 2010 will get the bodykit free of charge.

There are no changes under the skin. All upgrades (ed: a loosely used term, you understand) are purely cosmetic, and Hyundai-Sime Darby Motor’s press release confirmed as much. Even the interior is left untouched.

Changes brought about by the bodykit include skirts all-round, new sport rims, pieces of black plastic that visually magnify the front grille and fog lamp slots, exhaust tips flushed with the bumper, and another two black pieces of plastic plastered on the rear bumper.

The price of this kit? An additional RM8,000 to the i30’s sticker price.

The original car.

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See also: First Impressions: Hyundai i30

In the presence of some 600 specialists, Hyundai has unveiled the new 2.4-litre Theta II engine at the ongoing 9th Annual Hyundai-Kia International Powertrain Conference. Equipped with Gasoline Direct Injection, the aluminium block Theta-II is rated to produce 198hp @ 6,300rpm and 250Nm @ 4,250rpm for the Korean Domestic Market.

“The Theta II GDI convincingly demonstrates Hyundai’s advanced powertrain engineering capabilities,” said Dr. Lee Hyun-Soon, Vice Chairman and Chief Technology Officer.

In the Theta II GDI, fuel is directly injected into the combustion chamber at 150 bar in a two-phase injection process. The first of the two stages is what Hyundai calls the pilot injection, where a small amount of fuel is injected and ignited to send the piston downwards, triggering the power stroke. Then, in the second more powerful main injection phase, more fuel is injected and ignited. Hyundai claims that this split-injection technique ‘reduces loading on the catalytic converter and helps reduce emissions’.

Hyundai further claims a 7% and 12% improvement in low and high-end torque respectively when comparing the GDI against an non-GDI engine of equivalent displacement. Mileage improvements are claimed to be as high as 10%.

Additional innovations in the second gen Theta engine include a three-stage variable induction system, which varies the air-intake volume to ensure an optimal air-fuel mix under any engine load condition. Both the intake and exhaust valves are controlled by Hyundai’s Double Continuous Variable Valve Timing (DCVVT) system governed by a steel chain system.

Further innovations seen in the Theta II include various weight saving efforts such as a redesigned crankshaft and reinforcing of the engine block without adding further weight. Internal friction of the engine is reduced by switching from a fixed-type piston pin to a fully floating design.

According to Hyundai, the Theta II engine is expected to debut in the new Sonata during the first half of next year.

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Here’s a quick bit of news from Hyundai. The Santa Fe SUV, launched in the year 2000, with one new model change in between, has reached a cumulative sales figure of 2,000,000 units worldwide. Below are the sales figures sent to us from Hyundai Sime-Darby Motor Sdn Bhd.

In Malaysia, the Santa Fe is currently available in two variants, a 2.7-litre petrol engined version, and a 2.2-litre turbodiesel version.

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824,181. Just a number. A large one, but for you and me, just a number, nonetheless. However, for the folks at Hyundai Motor Company, that was the number of cars that they sold worldwide in the third quarter of 2009 – half them produced in Korea, the other half distributed among overseas plants in China, U.S, India, Czech Republic, and Turkey.

Putting that figure into perspective, it is a staggering 41.4% increase from Q3 2008. Translating that to the dollars and cents, Hyundai’s Q3 net profit for 2009 stood at 979 billion won (RM2.7b), a mind-boggling 270% increase from Q3 2008. In any business, 270% increase in net profit is nothing short of phenomenal.

Hyundai’s remarkable rebound from the economic crisis was greatly spurred by growth in demand from government sponsored initiatives worldwide. They have seen their market share for Q3 2008, which stood at 4.4%, rise to 5.5% for Q3 2009.

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Recently, BusinessWeek and leading brand consultancy firm Interbrand published their annual Best Global Brands list ranking the world’s top 100 trade marks. For the ninth successive year, Coca-Cola has been ranked the world’s top brand, with IBM, Microsoft, and GE trailing in its wake. The biggest growths were made by Google, Amazon, and Zara, with their brand values increasing by 25%, 22%, and 14% respectively. Not every one had it good though. Notable names such as Merrill Lynch, AIG, and ING were even wiped out from the list altogether.

The world’s most valuable brand.

Perhaps due to the current climate of economic uncertainty, the overall value of the top 100 brands has declined by 4.6% compared to 2008. Brands in the food industry, such as McD, Kellogg’s, and Nestle, registered growth, whereas banks and automakers were hit the worst. You know the news is bad when Hyundai prides itself for having the lowest decline in brand value at 5%. Ferrari registered 0% decline, but everyone else’s brand value took a hit, averaging a 7.4% decline.

The least declining auto brand

Toyota continues to top the list among auto manufacturers, sitting at 8th place with a brand value of US$31b, declining by 8% from 2008. German giants Mercedes-Benz and BMW follow closely at 12th and 15th placing. Toyota’s arch-rivals, Honda, sit three places below the propellor badge at 18th place, with a brand value of US$17.8b.

Still the world’s top auto brand.

American giants Ford, more than US$10b less valuable a brand than Honda, is the 5th biggest auto brand at 49th place. Volkswagen and its subsidiary, Audi, are seperated by ten places at 55th and 65th spots respectively. At 69th place is Hyundai, at US$4.6b, is a more valuable brand than Porsche, Ferrari, and Lexus. Hyundai debuted in this ranking list in 2005 at 84th place, and has been making steady annual growth since then.

“Thanks to eye-catching products like Genesis and the innovative marketing such as the Assurance program, Hyundai is making a big splash in the world market,“ Interbrand said.

Products like the Genesis has helped raise Hyundai’s profile.

BusinessWeek’s “Best Global Brands” special report is featured in the September 28, 2009 issue, on newsstands Friday, September 18th. Expanded content, including full (more) methodology, is available on BusinessWeek.com at www.businessweek.com/go/brand and on Interbrand.com at http://www.thebestglobalbrands.com.

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Since its launch in 2005, Hyundai has sold 20,000 units of the Getz hatchback in Malaysia. Commemorating this milestone, Hyundai Sime-Darby Motors Sdn Bhd has recently launched the limited Hyundai Getz SE(although the official pics show a car wearing Inokom’s badge). Only 300 units will be sold, in both manual and auto guise, and the privilege of owning one will set you back anywhere between RM61k and RM66k, depending on variant and location.

Hyundai Getz SE

Setting the Getz SE apart from its run-of-the-mill brethren are redesigned bumpers front and rear, side-mirror-integrated signals, and new 15″ alloys wrapped in Dunlop D01 rubber. The interior features leather trim, brushed aluminium finish, and is stamped with a serialized individual plate number (001 – 300). The Getz SE also features a new colour, called Icing White, featured in the official press photos issued to us by HSDM.

Interior

Powertrain options remain unchanged, with the 96hp 1.4-litre twin cam engine available to be paired with either a 5-speed manual or four-speed automatic transmission. Other features of the Getz SE include driver’s airbag, and a Multi Information Display integrated to its trip computer.

Rear bumper gets diffuser, but don’t let sharp eyes spot the hidden exhaust!

The Getz SE will be available for viewing at all HSDM Showrooms nationwide starting September. OTR Prices for the Getz SE are as follows:

Peninsula

• Manual: RM60,984.00
• Auto: RM63,888.00

East Malaysia

• Manual :RM62,716.10
• Auto: RM66,277.00

Like all its models, HSDM offers the Getz SE with an industry-leading 5 years / 300,000km extended warranty that assures all customers of any unexpected repair or cost due to manufacturing defect.

Malaysian motorists can place their bookings at the nearest sales outlet or call HSDM’s Customer Careline at 1-300-13-2000 for more information.

KON