Hyundai Motor’s UK sales chief has picked the middle ground from a 200,000-unit variation in forecasts for this year and ruled out US- or Kia-style incentives to win business.
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Guy Pigounakis said it was “difficult to know where the market will go. I have seen predictions of 1.65m but it could go to 1.85m which is still way behind last year’s 2.4m. We are working on 1.72m and believe that with the model mix we have we could maintain that [record setting January] market share of around 1.7%.”
He added that Hyundai UK was “well covered in the A, B and C segments which is where 80% of our sales now are – last year these segments accounted for 44%.”
He is not looking at any major incentives to boost sales such as those adopted by the company in the US or by sister brand Kia in the UK. Hyundai of North America has an offer to take cars back without penalty if a customer loses their job while Kia has a seven-year warranty on its European-built Ceed models.
Pigounakis said: “We’ve looked at the US model but it is quite complicated to implement and very hard to replicate. It’s hard enough to arrange normal finance at the moment. There is also a view that this could send out a negative message.
“In terms of Kia’s warranty, their reasons are many and varied but Hyundai’s awareness is much greater than Kia’s and we want to spend the money in other areas.”
