Welcome to The Morning Dump, bite-sized stories corralled into a single article for your morning perusal. If your morning coffee’s working a little too well, pull up a throne and have a gander at the best of the rest of yesterday.
Kia/Hyundai Kicking Ass And Chewing Bubble Gum And Reportedly Bereft Of Chewing Material
It’s hard to look at anyone’s sales and assume much right now. There’s such a dearth of product and such an abundance of supply chain issues that the most meaningful statistic one can draw is that, hey, maybe this company knows how to make cars and is geographically/logistically well equipped to do so? Even so, Hyundai and Kia are strongly on the upswing in way that’s probably more meaningful than that. Their cars are, for lack of a better term: Good. Some are even better than good, like the Hyundai Tucson Plug-In. Countless keystrokes have documented the reasons why, going all the way back to the strategic devaluation of South Korea’s currency all the way through hiring only the best Europeans. In September, Hyundai jumped 11% year-over-year to nearly 60,000 deliveries while Kia saw an increase of 6.5% to hair over 56,000, which is a September record for the automaker. Even Genesis was up 0.8%. In addition to having cars and having cars that people want, the company is also probably making money. Why? Here’s a little tidbit from Automotive News: This maybe goes some way to explaining why every car you rent seems like it’s about to explode. It also shows a company that’s quite smart and seemingly flexible enough to respond to the market. At every level, Hyundai and Kia seem to be excelling.
Geely Buys Part Of Aston Martin
Geely would like to own Aston Martin. All of Aston Martin. In fact, Geely seems hell bent on owning just about everything. But if you can’t own all of a car company, 7.6% ain’t half bad, which is what Geely’s ended up with. If you feel like Geely has its hands in everything it’s because Geely seems to have its hands in everything. Curiously, Geely does not get a board seat but Kristen Korosec over at TechCrunch does a good job of breaking down the moving pieces and explaining why it probably doesn’t matter: To make things even more exciting, Aston managed to grab another $732 million from Mercedes-Benz and the Saudi Public Investment Fund.
Not A Good Look LG
Good news for owners of Chrysler Pacifica Hybrids built in 2017 and 2018, Stellantis doesn’t yet know why more than 12 of these cars have caught on fire, but they know how to stop that from happening again. Per The Detroit News: And who made that battery pack? LG Energy Solutions, of course. You may remember those batteries from the time that Chevy had to recall every single Bolt and Bolt EUV.
Go Read About Sera Trimble
You may not know who Sera Trimble is, but you’ve definitely seen here work. From Kia Hamster to Subaru dog to that awesome backward driving in “Licorice Pizza” she is everywhere. She’s also a delightful person singled out by our old pal Hannah Elliott for this profile. Here’s a highlight where she explains why she drives her Fiesta ST to set and not one of her Porsches: Friends writing about friends! What a great way to start the week. That was why I didn’t feel comfortable in the Cayman. If you show up and the producer is driving an Audi S4, which they were 10 years ago, and I’m pulling up in a sports car, it’s just like, “Uh-oh, maybe we pay the drivers too much.” I’m just not that person. Granted there is the exact opposite of me in the industry. Mr. Drives His Ferrari to Work Every Day.
The Flush
Whelp, time to drop the lid on today’s edition of The Morning Dump. Let’s talk about friendship: Who is your best car friend? Who do you call when you’ve got a weird/bad idea? It’s important to have car buddies. I have too many car buddies, which is why I make so many weird/bad choices.
Photos: Hyundai, Kia, Newspress, Stellantis, and Instagram
Second, I’m fairly certain this is not LG’s first foray into incendiary portable energy sources.
My enablers though, they are beautiful creatures that see the world through fey eyes, thinking nothing of putting a liter-bike engine into a Karmann Ghia, or swapping the suspension and running gear of a ’60s Corvette for a third generation Supra. Under budget, on time, and delightfully and exceptionally strange their creations are. My designs aren’t as weird, but they’re getting there.
Car buddies, I have a couple of former coworkers I run stuff buy. One of them will do minor work for beer and cigars. Tell him the problem, takes a look, comes up a parts list, drop off car/parts/beer/cigars, and magically the car is fixed.
The Elantra N is also killer. I think it drives slightly better than the Kona N but the overall package wasn’t as useful for my needs. Plus, despite how good the N DCT is (it runs laps around VW’s DSG, which in and of itself is a great gearbox), the Elantra N and Veloster N (while it’s still alive) can also be had in stick.
That being said, their SUVs are also amazing. The Telluride and Palisade punch way above their weight, and the Genesis products are striking in person. Plus, they’ve got all the hot EVs right now. Hyundai/Kia/Genesis are killing it and have proven worthy of enthusiast attention.
I really relate to Sera’s approach here. I think it’s a valuable lesson. My dad is uber successful (this isn’t meant to be a flex-his money isn’t my money) and has run his own company for years. He could afford to drive a damn McLaren if he really wanted to, but he rolls up to work in a Grand Cherokee. As a car nut I’ve naturally questioned why he won’t buy himself something nicer, and he says he’d like to but it “sends the wrong message”. Before Cherokees he drove an assortment of Volvos, with the biggest flexes he’s ever had being certified Audis.
I thought it was ridiculous for a long time, but ultimately decided that he’s right. People talk, and people make assumptions. What you’re driving sends a message. If you want everyone to think you’re wealthy/successful/etc that’s fine and you can go with whatever status symbol you’d like….but if staying humble is your goal and you don’t want people making assumptions about your finances, it helps to drive accordingly. This is one of the reasons for my “a fully spec’d regular car is better than a base luxury one” takes…and yet another reason I love my Kona N. I’m probably in the top 10% of earners where I work, but why would I want people knowing that? It’s not my style. Normies don’t have any idea what a Kona N is.
My best car bud is a frequenter of the orange site and I think he pops up here periodically. You know who you are, amigo. The name of our game is automotive shitposting, but we also do a good job of balancing out each other’s most reckless car desires. I’m grateful for some of the potential purchases that he’s talked me out of…and I’m sure he’d say the same of me.
Further, Hyundai/KIA seem to be at least 10 years behind the rest of the market when it comes to corrosion control. They aren’t standing up to rust as well as even GM, Ford and Chrysler, who aren’t exactly the best, excepting the newer F-150. They’re nowhere near as rot-free as Toyota, Honda and European makes.
Hyundai and KIA are CRUSHING it when designing appealing new cars. As “Certified Pre-Owned” they’re still nice things. But in the used market, once they have some miles on them, I still consider them a HARD PASS, no thanks, K BYE.
…baby steps, I suppose ????
This is great a lot of the time, but I do admit that there are times I envy the folks who have a sober minded adult to say no to their worst impulses.
I do have definite qualms about their human rights and environmental records, and seeing the Saudi or Qatari or whatever sovereign investment fund get involved in anything squicks me out for similar reasons. However, as an American, our house is also pretty well glazed, and given how much we like throwing our weight around overseas, I can’t really get mad at other countries for wanting to do the same.
I think it is fair to say that the Chinese cultural approach towards quality and customer retention is….different.
“Taking into consideration existing mature quality evaluation models (particularly the methods of evaluating customer satisfaction) and China’s unique national conditions during its economic transition, four dimensions are proposed to evaluate quality in China: consumer satisfaction with quality, product safety, government regulations on quality, and citizen’s concept of quality. Based on empirical investigation data in this framework, the overall evaluation of quality in China is summarized as quality in China has just reached a general standard, product safety remains steady as a whole, government quality regulations are ineffective, and Chinese citizens’ concept of quality is poor. “
https://journalofchinesemanagement.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40527-014-0003-7
Whatever, I want human rights and the environment to both be respected. Democracies aren’t automatically 100% good at either, despite what we like to tell ourselves. I’d much rather live in a democracy than under an official one party system, but it’s naive and wrong to say it’s all good here and all bad there
The question is what can the rest of the world (US included) do about it? Not much. We will have to learn to merge with them instead of limit or control China. In the same way that the rest of the world had to learn to merge with the dominant US economic force after WWII.
In fact, your assumption that they are growing because of “money we’ve given or lent them” is misguided. Our economy is already so extremely intertwined with China’s that they cannot be separated. For instance, cell phones, microchips, rare earth metals, basic manufacturing of every tiny component and even the common button. One city in China makes over 60% of all buttons in the world. We just ain’t going back to the economy of 1997 no matter what fear American politicians spew out.
Of course, it’s been in the shop for a month waiting for a new ignition lock. Kia can’t seem to keep that part in stock.
Well, I guess it’s their people’s money, but it’s already stolen anyway.
