Cutting-edge Hyundai-Samsung cars will soon be in the UK

Back in the mid-eighties, before Auto Express was born, I served as an Economist Intelligence Unit writer in South Korea, a country that somehow seemed much further away then than it does today. 

Surprise, surprise, the distance between the UK and the Land of Morning Calm is the same now as it was then: around 5,500 miles by air or 7,400 by road. But these days you can fly there direct, minus those previously essential refuelling stops in Hong Kong or Alaska. And I know – because I recently did it in a Mercedes – that driving across mainland Europe, through all of Kazakhstan, the outskirts of Mongolia and the breadth of China to Beijing (before a final-leg ferry crossing on the Yellow Sea to the Korean peninsula) is doable, if hugely time-consuming.

Although South Korea was dogged by a military dictatorship and daily rioting when I first rocked up there, it’s now a fully functioning democracy. The sort of Korean music, K-pop celebs, TV dramas, restaurants and sports stars the UK rarely, if ever, heard and saw in the past are almost commonplace today. 

And then there’s the cars. Hyundai’s relationship with UK motorists got off to an iffy start in the eighties, when it tried to sell us Pony hatchbacks and pick-up trucks for £4,000. Yet despite its early mistakes in the car game, I accurately predicted it had the talent, hunger and passion to design and build cars on a par with those from Japan. 

Another of my forecasts was that a skint, then almost unknown, Kia would eventually have similar levels of success. And it did. But my biggest and bravest eighties prediction was that a certain tech company producing everything from semiconductors to household appliances would be the next big Korean player to join the global automotive game. “Samsung is coming,” I warned in this mag. But the company was so busy making and selling billions of phones, laptops, TVs and other state-of-the-art products that it seemed unenthusiastic about its inaugural Samsung Motors car-building venture. And its supposed tie-up with SEAT was equally lukewarm.

No matter. Last week, the highly respected tech empire finally announced, “Samsung Electronics is collaborating with Hyundai Motor.” At the same time, Hyundai formally and significantly referred to an “alliance” between the two. The groundbreaking deal between these world-class firms, with separate but complementary skill sets, was signed in Seoul. But it looks and feels more like a marriage made in automotive heaven.

It’s been 35 years since I warned UK motorists that Samsung was coming their way. And finally it’s arrived – with Hyundai by its side. This is huge. It shouldn’t be long before cutting-edge Hyundai-Samsung cars start appearing in a showroom near you. But maybe they’ll be deserving of Samsung-Hyundai badges instead.

Are you excited to see what Hyundai and Samsung will create together? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section...