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Hyundai US marketing chief steps down

For the past four and a half years, Hyundai's marketing efforts in America have been steered by Steve Shannon. But now the Korean automaker is going to have to find a new marketing guru, because Shannon has reportedly stepped down with apparently immediate effect.
A career automobile marketer, Shannon came to Hyundai early in 2011 after over a quarter century at General Motors, effectively switching places with Joel Ewanick and Chris Perry, who moved from Hyundai to GM the previous year.
During his 25 years in Detroit, Automotive News points out, Shannon worked with such brands as Buick, Oldsmobile, Saab and Hummer. He was particularly instrumental in launching the Saturn brand and served as executive director of marketing for Cadillac prior to moving to Hyundai.

Hyundai, Kia earmark $760 million to settle U.S. lawsuits over engine fires

SEOUL — Hyundai and affiliate Kia have earmarked 900 billion won ($758 million) to settle U.S. class action litigation and address engine-related issues including fires and failures in the United States and South Korea. The move marks the South Korean auto giant's first major effort to resolve years of trouble over engine defects that have also sparked probes by the U.S. safety regulator and prosecutors. Hyundai Motor will make a provision of about 600 billion won in its July to September earnings while Kia will book one for about 300 billion won, they said on Friday. Hyundai and Kia said in a statement that under the U.S. settlement they would install software to monitor for symptoms of engine failure and take other steps, including offering compensation options and lifetime warranties. A total of 4.17 million Hyundai and Kia models equipped with Theta II gasoline direct injection (GDI) engines, which were sold in naturally aspirated 2.0-liter and 2.4-liter displacements, and had a turbocharged derivative, will be affected by the U.S. settlement. Hyundai and Kia, together the world's fifth-biggest automaker by sales, recalled nearly 1.7 million vehicles in the United States to address the possibility of engine fires. In November, Reuters reported that U.S. federal prosecutors had launched a criminal investigation to determine if the recalls had been conducted properly. Since 2017, the U.S. safety regulator has been investigating whether the recalls covered enough vehicles and were conducted in a timely manner. The investigation comes after Kim Gwang-ho, then an engineer at Hyundai, flew to Washington in 2016 to tell the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) the companies should have recalled more vehicles over the problem, citing an internal report. Hyundai Motor at that time denied allegations. The NHTSA this year opened a fresh investigation into 3 million Hyundai and Kia vehicles after reviewing reports of more than 3,000 fires that injured more than 100 people. That probe came in response to a petition seeking an investigation filed in June by the nonprofit Center for Auto Safety.

Here it is, Hyundai's headlining Super Bowl commercial

Hyundai has ponied up for five commercials to play in, around and after the Super Bowl on Sunday, and it's slowly been releasing them one by one this week to attract as much attention as possible to these expensive ads. You've stuck with us through the first four, and we've got one last ad from Hyundai, its headliner, to show you.
Called Epic PlayDate, the ad's big hook is alt-rock band The Flaming Lips, who not only appear in the ad, but also wrote a new track called Sun Blows Up Today just for the spot. The track is available on iTunes as a single today, and will be a bonus track on their new album called Terror, which comes out in April.
The commercial is meant to sell something, and that something is the new three-row Santa Fe crossover. It follows a day in the life of a family with kids who do all sorts of crazy things, and we're told by Hyundai that the activities in which they partake pay homage to "signature band references" of The Flaming Lips.