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Hyundai Brand Also Sets New Volume Benchmark
The 2013 Hyundai Elantra was perhaps the perfect embodiment of the Hyundai brand as a whole during the past selling season. Consider: On the one hand, its manufacturer just reported a new annual sales record for the nameplate, which topped its previous volume mark earlier in December and is on its way to becoming the second of the brand’s vehicles—along with the Hyundai Sonata—to deliver more than 200,000 units this year.
But then you have to note that Elantra sales are ahead of last year’s pace by a modest 5.6 percent—the industry as a whole is up 13.9 percent through November—and even that total has to be discounted since Hyundai also includes sales of the 2013 Hyundai Elantra GT and 2013 Hyundai Elantra Coupe under the Elantra umbrella. And the less said about the Elantra’s involvement in the Hyundai fuel-efficiency fiasco, the better.
Just to be clear here, though, the sales issue is solely a mathematical one, and the fuel-efficiency situation, at least in the case of the Elantra, is more about losing face than losing mpg. Look at how the base Elantra’s adjusted EPA marks compare to those from its high-efficiency, special-edition rivals, and pay particular attention to the combined numbers:
Vehicle
EPA line
MSRP
2013 Hyundai Elantra
28/38/32
$16,965
2013 Chevy Cruze Eco
28/42/33
$19,680
2013 Honda Civic HF
29/41/33
$19,605
2013 Ford Focus SFE
28/40/33
+$19,295
As for the Hyundai brand itself, we can start by noting that it, too, had driven to an annual volume record before the year actually ended, but—as was the case with the Elantra—there were more than a few bumps in the road along the way.