Originally Posted By: rjundi
Hyundai/Kia took a risk and fudged the results to sell more cars since their engineering was not up to the task.
Not sure if would have cost them more then $350m to engineer and manufacture the cars to achieve the figures they made up.
Just my personal opinion but their cars are almost too good to be true for the price. Something has to give to get something cheaper, my guess was durability but apparently economy too. I am still tainted by the garbage of the late 1980's and will never own that badge in my lifetime if I can help it.
The thing is, they aren't really that cheap anymore. You can find cheaper cars at a Nissan dealer. You might even be able to get a better price on a Camry than a Sonata.
I think most other manufacturers that have been in the states significantly longer already learned long ago that overstating numbers opens them up to litigation and in the end doesn't work out well for them. Plus, they were already in the habit of understating performance going back to the 1960s and maybe even before that for various reasons.
Hyundai probably just thought it wouldn't be that big of a deal. I'm kind of surprised they even took the risk though. Most Hyundai shoppers seem more concerned with features for the price rather than performance for the price.
