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| Hyundai’s new-look Santa Fe will have its world premiere at the New York International Auto Show. The company’s Elantra is SA’s car of 2012 |
ONE morning at dawn in 2003, I fell out of a Hyundai Santa Fe into the Groot Marico River.
Even from underwater, that Santa Fe looked nothing like the fluid Santa Fe which Hyundai will premiere at the New York International Auto Show on April 6.
While a fair ride for the price, that 2003 model still suffered from the nineties’ design ethos of bulgy curves — every single one of which the ooms in Groot Marico ravished with their eyes as I drove past their stoeps.
Which neatly brings me to why Hyundai may yet replace Toyota as the world’s dominant car force. While Toyota designs by committee, Hyundai designs with a unique mix of empiric voodoo. Toyota took seven years to conclude a deal with Subaro that both companies wanted from the start. Hyundai is showing off next year’s cars next week.
The Koreans, you have to understand, are instinctively scientific and totally superstitious, and this affects everything they do, be it making cars or choosing love.
Which is why, on street corners in Seoul, serene Buddhists frown at people who order dog stew for a good-luck meal. And on the trains, young lovers compare their astrological charts before even thinking of hanky panky. Everyone wants to make sure new Korean babies will be both clever and lucky.
Yet, Koreans have no time for nostalgia. After they hosted the Fifa World Cup in 2002, they bulldozed their soccer stadia to make space for more useful buildings. Like universities. Which they need to churn out engineers. Who helped to design cars like the Hyundai Elantra 1,8 GLS, which so far this year, became the Car of the Year in South Africa and the United States.
Which is all the proof one needs that the Korean mix of empiric voodoo is delivering the goods people want.
Seems those ooms on the stoeps in Groot Marico could spot a winner years in advance, bulgy curves and all.
• Alwyn.Viljoen@ witness.co.za
