I briefly worked for a Hyundai dealership in 1998 and then worked for a Nissan dealership that had a "sister" Kia dealership. BTW, "Kia" stand for "Kick In the ***!" I remember the valve guides falling out of the cylinder heads on the early Hyundai engines and their Mitsubishi automatic transmissions were always on the work bench! Later, Kia had money issues and started splicing wiring subharness together from different sources, leading to all sorts of electrical problems. Belts would always squeak and Sportages would go through wheel bearings like they were going out of style! Hyundai straightened its act out first, then took over Kia and they got much better. These days they both make pretty good vehicles with long warranties and good bank for the buck. They basically followed the model of Toyota and Nissan when they came to the USA in the 50's. At first, they were terrible! They worked out the bugs and sold cheap, well-built cars to the youth. As these owners got older and started having families, they started building bigger cars and kept expanding their lines as time went by. Unfortunately for Nissan, they've seemed to lost their way a little over the past 25-years. They can build some really good vehicles, but they also build some poor vehicles and they always seem to be a couple of years behind Toyota and Honda...and, well, everybody else! They do things like building a "full size" truck (Titan) that is smaller than their competition and terrible in gas mileage. Or, continueing to build CVT transmissions that aren't very good and have developed a poor reputation. Or, developing the variable compression engine used in some Altimas and Infinitis that has mediocre performance and not so great gas mileage. The list goes on! I would trade in my R51 Pathfinder for a Kia Telluride in a minute if only I could afford it!
