South Korea’s largest carmaker Hyundai Motor aims to sell 100,000 units of its new Grandeur, a company executive said at the official launch event Tuesday.
“Before we began receiving preorders three weeks ago, I was worried because of the prolonged economic recession and end of benefits for the individual consumption tax and competition,” Lee Kwang-guk, an executive vice president of Hyundai Motor, told the media. ”But the record-breaking preorders have made me confident that we can sell 100,000 units in 2017."
Hyundai Motor's new Grendeur. (Yonhap)
The company has received 27,491 preorders in three weeks after an all-time record high single-day preorders on Nov. 2 of 15,973 cars.
In 2015, Hyundai sold 87,182 units of the fifth-generation Grandeur.
The record-breaking preorders were partly backed by increasing number of young customers, Jung Rag, another executive vice president of the company said. “Previously, most of the customers of the Grandeur were those in their 50s and 60s, but now there are many younger customers in their 30s and 40s,” said Jung.
In order to attract younger customers, the development team for Grandeur focused on making a more dynamic design, he added.
The new Grandeur is slightly longer and wider than the older model. It’s 4,930 millimeters long and 1,865 millimeters wide. It has a modern and sleek look compared to previous generations.
The new high-end passenger vehicle is equipped with Hyundai Smart Sense safety technologies for the first time, as the company aims to create a society with no car accidents, according to Hyundai.
The New Grandeur is available in four models - Gasoline 2.4, Gasoline 3.0, Diesel 2.2 and LPi. The price ranges from 26.2 million won ($22,300) for the LPi Basic Modern to 38.7 million won for the Gasoline 3.0 Exclusive Special. In 2017, the carmaker will introduce Gasoline 3.3 and Hybrid options.
First launched in 1986, 1.85 million vehicles of the 30-year-old model have been sold around the world.
By Park Ga-young (
gypark@heraldcorp.com)
