Thursday 14th July 2011


The Super Rich Buy Hyundais, Says, Er, Hyundai

Amex Black Cardholders in US buy as many Hyundais as Bentleys

Would you buy this over a Bentley??
Would you buy this over a Bentley??
It sounds ridiculous, we know, but it is apparently true: 6 per cent of American Express Centurion Card holders (that's the more-or-less unlimited credit card belonging to the likes of Simon Cowell, Kanye West and Denzel Washington) own a Hyundai. The same proportion as own a Bentley or an Audi.

It seems difficult to believe, given that the Hyundai brand in the UK only relatively recently began crawling out of the 'rubbish but very cheap' segment of the new car market, but according to US Hyundai boss John Krafcik it is no word of a lie.

Admittedly Hyundai does have a couple more high-end offerings than we get over in Blighty, namely the Equus luxury saloon, and Genesis saloon and coupe (whose latest R-Spec version offers a 429hp V8, an 8-speed ZF automatic transmission, and 0-60mph in 5.1secs), which could go some way ot explaining things.

There's also the fact that, among Black Card holders (average wealth $16.3m), Acura (7%), Ferrari (8%), Lexus (11%), Porsche (15%), Mercedes-Benz (21%) and BMW (22%) are all more popular motors. Even so...Hyundai as popular as a Bentley? Never thought we'd see the like, etc...

Don't believe us? Go and have a look in the Wall Street Journal, where we spotted the story (and that's a Murdoch paper, so it must be true...).

Author: Riggers

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102 comments on this story

Last comment was by MattDell
on 16th July 2011