AUTOMOTIVE
AUGUST 22, 2021
A Brief Tale Of Hyundai Motor Company
A brief tale of Hyundai Motor company dates back to 1947, when a South Korean entrepreneur name Chung Ju Yung founded the Hyundai Engineering and Construction Company. It was originally a small car workshop.
The name “Hyundai” comes from the Korean word (hyeondae) which means “modernity” or “contemporary” in English translation. The name represents the company’s culture, as they are continuously introducing new and innovative vehicles and technologies for their products.
Due to the North Korean Invasion of 1950, Chang Ju-Yung had to move with his brother to Busan, but continued to do whatever work he could get from the Korean Ministry of Transportation and the UN forces. This led to the creation of the Hyundai Motor Company. On December 29, 1967, the Hyundai Motor Company was founded.
They released the first model, the Cortina (from the US version of the Ford Cortina) a year later and planned to produce their own car.
George Turnbull, former Managing Director of Austin Morris at British Leyland, from the United Kingdom was hired. He and his team then designed what to be the first South Korean car. In 1975, the Pony was released and exports began in the following year.
By the year 1982 they entered the British market and Canada in 1984, but not the United States as the Pony did not pass the US emissions standards.
After aquired rival KIA Motors in 1998, the company became the second-largest corporation in South Korea with $57.2 billion sales. As for the sales, the 4.05 million cars sold worldwide in 2011 made Hyundai the fourth biggest in the automotive industry (behind General Motors, Volkswagen and Toyota).
Today, the three brands comprise the Hyundai Motor Group are Genesis, Ioniq and KIA. Currently the company has 33.88 percent of KIA Corporation. The headquarter is in Seoul, South Korea.
In 1999, Chun Ju Yung passed the torch to his son Chung Mong Koo and Hyundai Motor Group invested heavily in quality, design, manufacturing and research/development of its vehicles. But on April 28, 2006 Chung Mong Koo was arrested for corruption of 100 billion won by the South Korean government. This made Kim Dong-jin, the Hyundai vice chairman and CEO, replaced him as head of the company.
Hyundai invest big in manufacturing plans throughout the world such as North America, India, Czech Republic, Russia China and Turkey as well as research and development centers in Europe, Asia, North America and the Pacific Rim.
In 2014, in a survey/study by J.D. Power and Associates in North America, Hyundai was ranked second in “initial quality”. According to Interbrand, Hyundai is now one of the top 100 most valuable brands worldwide.
On October 14, 2020 Euisun Chung became the new chairman if the Hyundai Motor Group while his father, Chung Mong-Koo is the Honorary Chairman now.
As for 2019, their total revenue was 105.75 trillion Won with net income reaching 3.18 trillion Won while the total assets of the company was 184.51 trillion Won with 104.731 employees in 2013.
In April 2021, the company reported a rise of profits by 187%, the highest in four years. In total, the Hyundai company recorded a profit of $1.16 billion from the beginning of 2021 until March.
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