South Korean automaker, Hyundai Motor revealed a redesigned Sonata on Wednesday, intending to reverse a drop in sales of a model having hard time to stand out in a degrading saloon segment.
Hyundai has accepted a sporty look for the updated car to recover ground lost to competing models like Renault SA’s SM6 in South Korea, where the market-leader’s share dropped to a record low in 2016.
The new Sonata will further compete Toyota Motor re-innovated Camry in the United States, where backbone saloons have been losing support to petrol-guzzling sport utility vehicles (SUV) as fuel costs dropped due to low oil prices.
Hyundai Motor said it intends to boost domestic purchases by 12 percent to 92,000 Sonata cars in 2017, domestic sales chief Lee Kwang-guk informed reporters. The Sonata is Hyundai Motor’s second-biggest selling model following its Elantra in the country along with the United States, and one of its leading sellers in China.
The high-class design and budget-friendly cost of the previous-generation Sonata, released in 2009, pushed Hyundai to its biggest-ever share of the U.S. market, and assisted it escape an industry-wide downturn highly untouched.
However its curvy designing dealt with mixed reviews in the home market of South Korea, encouraging the company to tone it down in 2014.
