Korean carmakers have come a long way since the days of the Hyundai Pony, the first locally developed automobile to be exported.
The days of being widely perceived as makers of cheap but unreliable vehicles are long gone with overseas surveys and consumer research showing vast improvements in their quality rankings.
Despite such developments, local carmakers’ design capabilities appeared to be lagging behind their technological prowess.
However, local carmakers including the two leaders Hyundai Motor Co. and Kia Motors Corp. began to pick up the slack in recent years, with Kia going on to win a number of international design awards.
Now it appears that local carmakers’ design efforts are beginning to show on the inside as well as the outside.
On April 7, the U.S.-based automotive industry publication Ward’s Auto announced this year’s Ward’s 10 Best Interior list, three of which were developed by or had a significant contribution from a Korea-based carmaker.
The publication’s editors drove 51 models whose interiors had undergone full overhauls or had significant improvements to decide the winners.
The Korean models included in the list are the compact car Hyundai Elantra, known locally as the Avante, and Kia’s midsized sedan K5.
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