Hyundai has a plan to get again to the 100,000 annual gross sales mark in Australia, however it’s not going to occur in a single day.

Hyundai Australia chief working officer John Kett lately shared with media his imaginative and prescient to return the model to the gross sales heights it loved in 2014, 2015, and 2016 – and it doesn’t contain ultra-cheap drive-away offers, or large fleet gross sales.

Its gross sales have slid since then, and in 2022 it was overwhelmed on the full-year gross sales charts by Kia for the primary time.

That development has continued all through 2023, with Kia at present sitting 1453 gross sales forward of its greater brother on the year-to-date VFACTS charts.

Mr Kett confirmed what we already knew, telling media “we don’t prefer it” when Kia sells extra automobiles.

However he additionally expressed warning about chasing numbers purely for the sake of it, arguing Hyundai “practically killed everybody” to hit 100,000 gross sales in 2016.

“No-one made any cash, and no-one can keep in mind us for it – particularly shoppers – as a result of they had been all offered to fleets,” Mr Kett mentioned.

Hyundai’s finest vendor in 2016 was the i30 hatch (beginning worth $21,450), adopted by the Tucson SUV ($27,990) and Accent ($14,990).

Subsequent time Hyundai celebrates 100,000 gross sales, Mr Kett says it’ll be in a manner “that the shopper felt like they received some worth” and “our [dealer] community felt like they made some cash”.

Mr Kett says with the correct provide of the present vary, and a few alternative additions to the line-up, Hyundai may obtain someplace between 90,000 and 100,000 gross sales per 12 months.

Though unwilling to decide to a agency deadline, the chief mentioned he’s hoping to return to 100,000 annual gross sales by round 2026.

Essential to hitting that determine is healthier provide of the city-sized Venue SUV and the larger, costlier new Kona.

“We’re enjoying with a chess set, and we don’t have [supply of] Kona. We’ve by no means actually had it,” Mr Kett mentioned.

“We’re enjoying with a chess set and we couldn’t get sufficient Venues, so our sub-$35k or $30,000 automotive we simply don’t have sufficient of. Within the chess set, we’re counting on too few merchandise to ship us that quantity.”

As for the function of fleets? Mr Kett dominated out a “majority” of gross sales going to fleets, and as an alternative known as for “complementary quantity and long-term enterprise relationships”.