Saturday Data: What ails Hyundai?

    

  
   Here is Alabama, we care about Hyundai because there is a massive Hyundai plant in Montgomery that employs thousands and contributes mightily to the area economy.
     By now all of the managers, and some of the employees of that plant, have read a lengthy critique about the brand in the New York Daily News.
     Among other things, it recommends Hyundai cancel the luxury Genesis brand cars. 
     Heresy, you say. Perhaps.
     But there is a lot more in the story. It offers a six-point plan to fix the company, which fired it's American manufacturing head last week. Number 3 of the six:

3.) Tout American manufacturing
Combat rising nationalistic sentiment by reminding consumers that Hyundai and Kia employ thousands of people in its Alabama and Georgia assembly plants, not to mention research, development, engineering, and design centers around the country.
People think of Hyundai and Kia as Korean brands, and while this is true, what people might not realize is that high-volume models such as the Hyundai Elantra, Sonata, and Santa Fe Sport, and the Kia Optima and Sorento, are built right here in the U.S.A. (in Montgomery)

It is a good read.

[UPDATE: Hyundai is cutting expenses---even relatively small expenses like printing, and larger ones like annual overseas trips home for workers--- according to online reports.]

[Saturday Data is a regular feature of www.timlennox.com]