The South Korean automaker Hyundai will stop marketing its Accent subcompact model in the Mexican market, without this meaning its exit from the segment of subcompact hatchbacks and sedans. The substitute for the Mexican manufacturing model will be another from Brazil.
“Accent will be reaching the end of its cycle this year,” confirmed Edgar Carranza, CEO of Hyundai in Mexico.
Accent shares a platform with Kia Rio, so both models are produced at Kia’s plant in Pesquería, Nuevo León. Between January and July, this complex assembled almost 21,000 units of the Accent hatchback and sedan versions, of which just over 60% were exported to the United States, according to Inegi data.
Hyundai launched the subcompact model in the Mexican market in 2017 and in that year it became one of the brand’s sales pillars. But “segment B, where Accent competes, has been getting smaller in the United States, and that makes it difficult to have a locally produced product,” said Carranza.
Accent’s eventual exit from the US market has led Hyundai’s Mexican subsidiary to look for other alternatives within its global portfolio. The South Korean brand produces a family of HB20 models in Brazil, including the HB20 hatchback (sold as Getz in some markets), the H20S sedan (Accent) and a HB20X crossover (Gravity). This new family of models will replace the Mexican Accent.
“It is a high-quality, well-proven product that has been sold for many years. I think it will be a success in Mexico,” said Carranza.
The manager explained that, for the moment, they do not plan to take advantage of the capacity that Accent will make available at the Pesquería plant to manufacture another model. “At the moment we would not be using this capacity ourselves.”
Kia was not available for comment on the production trim.
Hyundai has the objective of closing the year with a market share of 3.8%, a historical figure for the South Korean brand, which officially arrived in the Mexican market in 2014. Previously, the then Fiat Chrysler group had asked the brand for a license for the marketing of a past generation of the Accent model, which in Mexico was sold as the Dodge Attitude.
