• ix35 to get new smaller engines this year
• small MPV scheduled for late 2010 launch
• product offensive planned for 2011/2012
• i-flow concept points to future D-segment product

Hyundai has been on a roll in Europe, benefiting in particular from temporary scrappage schemes in a number of markets. Hyundai Motor Europe VP Allan Rushforth tells just-auto how it hopes to maintain momentum going forward.

Hyundai's 2009 sales performance in Europe was impressive, helped by the firm's recently replaced small car range being ideally suited to government sponsored scrappage schemes. When scrappage schemes came along, Hyundai was very well-placed with its i-range.

Rushforth says that Hyundai in 2009 was the second best performing brand in Germany in terms of the scrappage incentive by percentage performance (not volume, which was very much Volkswagen and Opel).

“Our business was doing well in Germany before the scrappage incentive kicked in – with the three recently introduced i-range products. So we had the new models in place that had been launched in the teeth of the CO2-based  car tax,” he says.

“Customers had already started downsizing and we had high value products that were relatively new to the market and benefiting from the CO2 car tax. Scrappage came along and amplified that effect.”

There was also, he says, a learning experience from scrappage in Germany that could be applied in other markets.

“On an operational level what we were able to do was take all the learning from our German experience to countries like Austria, UK and Spain, and get ahead of the game in those markets. We could make sure, for example, that we were being really proactive in terms of stock and that we had product at the right level to really make volumes with a sub-entry level derivative – a 'scrappage derivative' if you like. And we made sure we had the right marketing in place that talked not just cheap prices, but emissions benefits also.”

Rushforth is looking for growth this year, but is focussing on share rather than volume. He is expecting the European car market to go into reverse.

“In a European market that declined by 2% last year, we were up by 26% - share was 2.4%. This year I want to grow our share to 2.7%, whatever the market does.

“I think most of that growth will come in the final four months of the year. It has been a strong start to the year for us, but from March through to August I think the pace of growth will slow, with the industry in Europe starting to go backwards as the effects of disappearing scrappage schemes work through the year-on-year market numbers.”

He is looking, in particular, for sales support from the ix35 when it gets additional powertrain options.

“The ix35 will help us offset some of the decline in the overall market, especially when we introduce the smaller engines – the 1.6-litre gasoline and 1.7-litre diesel – available from September.”

There's also a new product coming at the end of the year - a B-segment MPV - that will help produce a sprint finish for the brand towards the end of the year, he says.

Beyond that, Rushforth is looking forward to a 'product offensive' that includes ten new products and derivatives in a two-year period from the end of the year.

Hyundai, it seems, will be looking to get into new segments.

“The challenge ahead is to retain our strength in the i-range and start to bring product to market in the D-segment and i-flow gives you an idea of the sort of products we have in mind for the future,” says Rushforth.

Dave Leggett