Hyundai’s US chief is out, as carmaker seeks growth
HYUNDAI Motor America has replaced its top executive, David Zuchowski, an unexpected move that comes as the South Korean automaker is struggling to regain US sales momentum.
Zuchowski, who was named president and chief executive of the Hyundai Motor Co’s US unit at the beginning of 2014, has left the company, the automaker said in a statement. It provided no explanation for his departure.
W Gerald Flannery, the US unit’s general counsel, was named interim president and chief executive until a permanent successor is chosen.
The move comes only a month after Zuchowski used the Los Angeles Auto Show to outline a plan to revamp the company’s line of sport utility vehicles, a weak spot that has hurt sales in the past few years as Americans flocked to larger vehicles.
In the first 11 months of this year, Hyundai’s sales have grown by only 1.3 percent, to 707,485 cars and light trucks, from the comparable period in 2015.
The Kia Motors Corp, an affiliate controlled by the Hyundai Motor Group, has seen its sales rise by 3.8 percent, to 593,245 vehicles.
Hyundai enjoyed rapid growth from 2008 through 2013, helped by its Sonata sedan, which the company had redesigned with a curvaceous look. It also priced the car competitively against the giants of midsize cars, the Toyota Camry and Honda Accord, and threw in a 10-year/100,000-mile pow- ertrain warranty and many features, such as side air bags and an electronic stability control system that at the time cost extra in many other cars.
It had similar success with a smaller car, the Elantra, and soon Hyundai was seen as a serious threat to Toyota, Honda, Ford Motor and General Motors.
But in 2012, Hyundai and Kia came under criticism after US regulators found they had been overstating by as much as a third the fuel economy numbers printed on window stickers.
About a year later, Hyundai unexpect- edly removed its top US executive, John Krafcik, and replaced him with Zuchowski. Krafcik now leads Google’s self-driving car project.
In the past few years, Americans have moved away from sedans and compacts, Hyundai’s strength. Instead, more people are buying SUVs, especially the smaller and lighter models known as crossovers.
While SUV sales have boomed, Hyundai has invested heavily to create Genesis, a separate luxury brand, to compete with Lexus, BMW and Mercedes-Benz.