<> Everybody knows that when you want a luxury car, you look to the Germans, the Japanese, and maybe the Brits. Everybody else knows only how to make Big or Cheap. Well if that's true, why is it that I'm in Seoul, sitting in the back of a -- I'm not kidding -- Hyundai Dynasty limousine? By Asian standards, it's huge. By any standard, it's nicely appointed, well made, solid. For the 17 minutes I've been in it, it has been infinitely reliable. If could just as well be a Chrysler or a Lincoln. And next to my car is a big Kia that seems quite shiny and luxurious. So If the Koreans know how to make these cars for themselves, what were they thinking when they began their onslaught of the American automobile market with the Excel (the only auto ever named after a piece of software the Excel)? Did they assume Americans were so racist that we couldn't cope with the idea of a gook luxury saloon? Or did they think that it would somehow be better in the long run if they took their worst, least profitable, least reliable product and threw it into the most competitive market in the world? Or maybe the logic was, Americans were too stupid to notice the difference anyway, it's so cheap it has to sell. No, they had to be thinking that the only way they had a chance to win was at the low end of the market where the Europeans had given up and the Japanese had lost their fervor. Now I have to admin I have a habit of buying the best cars offered by horrible car companies. As bizarre as it sounds, it's about as cheap as you can get, and you end up with the best and most reliable thing that they know how to make. The cars have elegantly unpronounceable names. The opposite strategy would get you a Tercel or a 190E-class, as crummy in name as in overall value. Hyundai's attack-from-below-with-your-worst-stuff strategy is just silly in this world of marketing. If other industries, you start with the most expensive product you can figure out how to make, and later work your way down-market to grow volume. Think Sony, or Enterprise Software, or the movie business. In the last 20 years, no car vendor has survived, let alone prospered, by undercutting the low end the market. In the 60s, Volkswagen, and Toyota Made It. Nissan and Honda followed them in during the 70s. But these companies did it this way because they didn't have any other option. They took their "big car" from the home market (yes, at the time a 600 cc 2-door was a big car, subject to luxury taxes in Japan). They didn't have a more expensive car to bring to the US: they exported their best stuff. But by the 80s, the Yugos and Ladas and Hyundais crash-landed when they hit American shores. Fiat, Renault (sniff), lots of others withered and died. Since the second oil crisis, car vendors trying to enter with the dirt-cheap play just lose money. Customers hate them. It's just been a mess at the bottom of the market. A child of 10 could tell you "don't go there." Now that I've spent a few days seeing what a smart and even elegant people the Koreans are, I'm convinced that what put Hyundai and Kia down in the economic sewage was a bad self- image. They think of themselves as low-cost producers of commodities, not capable of a luxury car. Even though they make them. The opposite extreme, and the moral of this diatribe, is the Parisian woman. She smokes, she doesn't exercise, she's self-indulgent, she eats snails for fun. And she is pursued. She has the arrogance to make herself beautiful by just thinking about it. Ok, and by spending a carload of francs on perfume. Dave