I noticed this in the ads that Hyundai ran, during the superbowl. My question: how could Hyundai make such a claim? Who rates paint quality on cars?
Personally, I think it is possible that Hyundai has newer painting equipment (than Mercedes-Benz)…but claiming that a $25,000 vehicle has better finishing than a $60,000 vehicle, is a bit of a stretch.
What do you say?
I don’t think its that much of a stretch. I had an old thread regarding the propensity for paint chipping on the front end of Lexuses (and all Toyotas in general) versus other models that I kept noticing in my line of work (car washing) and I wondered why this issue was so. I didn’t really get anywhere.
I was wondering if there were different formulations/applications for clear coats and such that would allow one car to be more resistant to having the paint chip when struck by road debris as opposed to another car that is of presumably higher quality due to its asking price.
I still wonder the answer to that question.
That was a funny claim. It reminded me of the old fake Car and Driver ads for the Trabant. “Plastic body…just like the Corvette!!!”
It is entirely possible. It is like those commercials that claim Beater-Mobile has better acceleration than a Mercedes, better braking than a Jaguar, and better headroom than a Bentley. Yes, it may be better than each of those cars on the one attribute mentioned, but is most likely worse on 99 others. By cherry-picking attributes across cars it makes it sound like Beater-Mobile is better than all other cars in all attributes. Those sneaky marketing folks… 
Still, Hyundai has come a long way since the only ones you saw were those tinny-looking Excels whose owners never seemed to wash them. The quality’s definitely better, and they probably offer enough different models to answer the conventional purchaser’s needs, i.e. whether they want a sedan, SUV, hatch, or coupe. IIRC there’s even a convertible.
Even so, it’s hard to defend comparing their paint to the S-class. It smacks of their old commercials which exulted in their being the most popular import–well, back then they were so much cheaper than any of the others that it was just a natural outcome and not something to brag about.
It’s not a matter of bragging: it’s a matter of knowing that many people follow the herd and won’t buy something they otherwise might if no one else is buying it.
Well, based on the time I spent working at a powder-paint factory (which includes, among other things, automotive paint), getting “better paint quality” without even tests is relatively easy.
There were several parameters which were the exact same for every single paint and which never got measured beyond that point. For example, let’s say you have set “Hammering >= 5” and that means “the painted sample will not chip after being hit with a special hammer under specific conditions five times or more.” Nobody would go and keep hammering until they chipped it, you know? Your spec is 5, you go to 5 and that’s it. Not only does it mean less work than hammering 5 times, checking, setting the sample back in the machine, hammering, checking… but it also means that you won’t get customers rejecting a batch because “the last one had Hammering 25 and this one is only Hammering 24!”
So, require your suppliers to provide “Hammering >= 6” and presto, you can claim higher quality. Of course, in a few months everybody will be requiring “Hammering >= 6”, but at that point you can claim to be a trendsetter 