• Detroit Free Press, Thursday, August 5, 2010 10:25 AM

Tom Walsh says we should remember how Wal-Mart blew by Kmart in the '90 as we observe Hyundai's assault on the American market. "Hyundai is not yet a Wal-Mart-scale juggernaut," he writes, "but it certainly has ambitions."

It also has results. It posted a 19% gain in July and its U.S. sales are up 24% this year. And consider where it's coming from. In 2001, Hyundai was No. 32 among 37 brands in J.D. Power's Initial Quality Study. By 2004, it was No. 7 and today it ranks in the top three non-premium brands. It's also fourth in global sales, from 11th in 1999, and its market share has risen from 1% to 5% in a decade.

The figures are all courtesy of John Krafcik, president of Hyundai Motor America, who spoke yesterday at the annual Management Briefing Seminars in Detroit. Cachet has its privileges. Krafcik tells Walsh that Sonata fetched a higher average transaction price nationwide in June than the Honda Accord.

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