There is almost nothing as risky as a car that can catch on fire. According to new recall documents, that is exactly what can happen with some Kia and Hyundai vehicles, which could dampen sales. (These are America’s deadliest cars to drive.)
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The recalls cover over 90,000 vehicles. Of these, 52,000 are Hyundais and 40,000 are Kias. According to CNN Business, drivers should look for several signs of trouble: “Drivers should also watch for smoke coming from underneath the vehicle as well as burning or melting odors, according to documents posted to the National Highway Traffic Administration’s auto safety web site.”
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The news badly dents the image of two car companies that have started to do very well in the United States after a long period of obscurity. Domestic, Japanese and German companies have dominated the American market. In the past two years, Kia and Hyundai, both from South Korea, have begun to show up at the top of research about quality and driver satisfaction.
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It is reasonable to say that established car brands can weather recalls. These brands have built their reputations for decades. Each has millions of vehicles in the market already. Kia and Hyundai have neither of these advantages.
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What looked like a promising future for the two South Korean brands has started to crumble.
Kia Cars Can Catch on Fire
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Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.
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A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.
TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.
McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.
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