Hyundai North America will debut a new car or truck next month, Mike O?Brien, the company?s vice president of corporate and product planning, told Car and Driver at the Detroit auto show. ?We will be launching a new vehicle [at the February auto show] in Chicago,? O?Brien said, but he declined to give details on the forthcoming product.
He did, however, quash our hopes that it would be a production version of the Santa Cruz concept, a popular mid-size pickup the Korean automaker unveiled two years ago in Detroit. ?It?s not the Santa Cruz,? O?Brien said. ?Hopefully we?ll have something to share with you soon on that.?
Some kind of truck or utility vehicle would help Hyundai?s product portfolio, and Chicago has been known as a place where automakers reveal larger vehicles. Press preview days for the Chicago auto show are February 9 and 10. A Daily Headache
Hyundai?s U.S. new-vehicle sales grew for a seventh straight year in 2016, edging up 2 percent at 775,005 units. Like other automakers, though, Hyundai saw waning interest in its mainstream car models such as the Elantra and the Sonata. Among the automaker?s cars, the only ones to post increases in 2016 were the Accent subcompact (up 30 percent to 79,766 units) and the oddball Veloster (up 24 percent to 30,053). Among the SUVs, the Santa Fe posted an 11 percent increase, to 131,257 units, while sales of the Tucson grew 41 percent, to 89,713 units.
So there?s much potential for growth when it comes to Hyundai?s trucks.
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