Seoul Man: A Memoir of Cars, Culture, Crisis, and Unexpected Hilarity Inside a Korean Corporate Titan (31 page)

But at this moment none of this mattered. All that mattered was that it looked like we fudged the numbers.

The company’s first response would be the most critical. It had to take ownership of the problem and provide a solution.

In what would become a best-practices case study in the industry, Hyundai Motor America simultaneously announced the bad news of the mileage reduction
and
the good news of a consumer compensation plan. Hyundai would issue debit cards to the owners of the affected vehicles that would be good for as long as they owned their cars. These cards would reimburse owners for the extra gas the owners would have to buy because their cars didn’t get quite the mileage promised, plus an additional 15 percent to compensate for the inconvenience. It came down to about $88 per owner per year. “We’re going to make it right,” Hyundai’s U.S. CEO John Krafcik said.

Hyundai eventually delivered several hundred thousand debit cards to its customers, paid a $100 million fine, lost $200 million in greenhouse-gas emission credits, and spent $50 million on testing improvements. Judges ruled the class-action suits settled for $400 million, or about $325 per owner.

Hyundai was not the only automaker to get tripped up by the EPA’s guidelines. A year later Ford had to shave 6 miles per gallon off its C-Max hybrid and 7 miles per gallon off its Lincoln MKZ hybrid. BMW had to lower the mileage of its Mini Cooper. And even luxury leader Mercedes-Benz was forced to lower the mileage on two of its vehicles.

Automakers want customers to have accurate mileage estimates. But the EPA must do its part and reform. It’s time for the agency to get in step with the rest of the world and start testing cars itself. If not that, then it should clarify its testing procedures to make certain that companies aren’t penalized hundreds of millions of dollars in fines, lawsuits, and reputational value simply because the EPA’s byzantine testing guidelines force engineers to exercise “good engineering judgment,” only to find out later it isn’t good enough for the EPA.

SECOND GENESIS

There is a saying in the auto industry that goes something like this: “Good product fixes everything.” Automakers refer to their lineup of cars as “product.” Not “the product,” just “product.” And the saying reflects the fundamental, visceral core of the industry: new cars are shiny, pretty things that distract us and move us emotionally. A car company can weather a number of public problems—recalls, mediocre quality ratings, gas-guzzler labeling—if it just keeps rolling out great product and it keeps hinting at even better product in the pipeline. The red meat of the latter is the “spy shot.”

Auto magazines pay photographers well to get the first pictures of an automaker’s next models before they hit the street. Photographers with long telephoto lenses stake out R & D centers, desert test tracks, and well-known cold-weather testing sites used by automakers in Sweden and Finland. The automakers respond by cloaking their cars in high-tech camouflage. This includes not only bulky black padding that makes the cars look like Special Forces vehicles but also shape-distorting black-and-white spidery decals that look like album covers for 1960s psychedelic bands and even fake body parts draped over the car meant to
hide its shape—like throwing a tent over a supermodel. These are often painted matte black, which absorbs a camera’s focus-finding infrared light, sometimes rendering a fuzzy picture.

Automakers have a love-hate relationship with spy shots. On the one hand they spoil an automaker’s reveal. On the other, especially in the Internet era, they can build enormous buzz for an upcoming model, more than any PR operation could crank out.

In late November, three weeks after our EPA crisis broke, we got a little gift of good product. The first spy shots of Hyundai’s next Genesis started appearing online.

The first Genesis, launched in 2008, was Hyundai’s maiden attempt to create a luxury sports sedan. Since 1999, Hyundai had sold its flagship sedan, Equus, in Korea. But it was seen largely as a plush limousine for executives to be driven about in. Genesis was built as a direct challenge to the Lexus sedans trickling into Korea and dominating the market in the U.S. The car announced Hyundai’s ambitions and was regarded as a terrific value—priced well below comparable BMWs and Audis. It even won the U.S. car of the year award against a weak field. Nevertheless, it was seen as a paint-by-numbers near-luxury car. A fine try, but nothing terribly innovative.

The industry was watching to see what Hyundai would do to Genesis when it came time for a makeover. Would Hyundai play it safe—dress up the exterior and add some features? Or would the company try to create a truly distinctive luxury car, one that would make the Germans nervous? Inside the company, the second Genesis was the Hail Mary, the car upon which so many hopes had been pinned. Hyundai had been working for four years to create product that would effectively showcase the aspirations it had for its brand. If it was seen as only a slightly nicer version of the first Genesis, much of the brand momentum gained since the vice chairman’s Detroit Auto Show speech would be lost. It would
be said that Hyundai was all talk and no walk. The next Genesis would be the most important car Hyundai had made in years.

In November 2012, three weeks after the EPA crisis hit, the first spy shots and video of the next Genesis prototype started popping up on the Internet. They spread quickly, to favorable reaction. Commenters compared the styling, even under all the camo, to top-end German luxury sedans. A couple months later, gearhead drool started pooling on the Internet when more spy shots appeared of the Genesis prototype racing hard through the demanding curves of the legendary Nürburgring racetrack in western Germany. This track, which twists for fifteen hair-raising miles through the forest, is known as the “Green Hell.” If you’re an automaker with real sports car ambitions, you must test on the ’ring. It is a station of the cross.

I started getting e-mails from auto journalists asking about the new Genesis instead of the EPA issue. The next Genesis looked like great product.

READY FOR TAKEOFF

I landed at Dulles International Airport outside of Washington a few days before Christmas 2012. Remarkably, the media coverage of the EPA issue started turning favorable. Not only for the gas reimbursement idea but also because Krafcik opened the Hyundai press conference at the Los Angeles Auto Show, the first after the EPA news broke, by addressing it head-on. Before talking about the company’s new cars on display, Krafcik reported how many customers the company had contacted regarding the EPA issue and how many had asked for the debit card and other marks of progress the company was making toward hopefully winning back its customers’ trust. If this crisis had to happen to Hyundai anywhere in the world outside of Korea, we were lucky it happened in the U.S. Krafcik always liked the media and had built up tremendous goodwill and capital with reporters by being
accessible and forthright during his time at the top of the company. He even Tweeted with them.

I felt good about the past year. We had hired our English editor, launched the company’s first English-language media site, put our PR team on social media, and were making solid steps in coordinating our global PR activities around the world. And I felt great about the year ahead. I was heading into 2013 with a promotion and reinforced upper-management backing. A new Genesis was coming and that was going to be fun to promote. And, most important to me, I was going home to see my wife and the birth of our daughter. This next year would be a good one.

A freezing wind whipped around Dulles as I stood outside waiting for Rebekah to drive up. I thought to film it so I could remember the moment. I saw our little red Hyundai Veloster approaching and held up my iPhone. Rebekah pulled to the curb; I could see Chairman riding shotgun. Rebekah put down the passenger’s-side window and Chairman—all ungainly seventy-some pounds of him—
heaved
himself airborne through the window like a B-25 struggling to get off a carrier deck. He hit the ground and ran to me, squeezing between my legs. Rebekah got out and came around the car. Wow, was she pregnant! I hugged her and looked down. “Honey, something’s come between us.”

There’s only one good thing about being separated from someone you love for an extended time: there is never a sweeter reunion. When we got back to the apartment, I flopped down on the bed, exhausted, with a feeling of earned rest. Chairman joined me and did something he’d never done before. He snuggled in next to me and pressed the top of his furry golden head into my cheek and kept it there. Poo Sang Moo drifted off like that, with the homey sound of Rebekah arranging Christmas decorations elsewhere in the apartment, feeling happy, content, loved.

20

THE 2013 MODEL

On Monday night, January 14, 2013, at about seven p.m., I was sitting in a bedroom that Rebekah and I had made into a nursery in our rental apartment in Arlington, Virginia. I was talking to members of my team back in Seoul via conference call at nine a.m. the next morning, their time. We were coordinating upcoming events, talking about the Detroit Auto Show that I was going to skip to stay home with my very pregnant wife. Rebekah and I were just back from dinner. Our little girl was due in nine days and we were packing in as many dinners out and movies as we could before she arrived.

Before dinner, Rebekah noticed some wetness in her pants. It was not enough to indicate that her water had broken, but she decided to call the doctor anyway. She talked to her doctor while I spoke to my team. After a few minutes Rebekah came into the bedroom and silently handed me a piece of scrap paper on which was written: “Doc says we need to go to the hospital.”

“OhmyGodI’vegottagotothehospital!” I spluttered to my team, and hung up, panicked. Rebekah tried to counsel calm. “It’s probably nothing,” she said. “They’ll check me out and send me home.” She was so confident of this that she refused to change out of her flip-flops and sweats.

The go-bag had been packed and in the car for a week. We put Chairman in his travel crate in the apartment—the one that had carried him from Seoul to the U.S.—and headed out into the cold night to the hospital.

We got to the hospital, and waited. And waited. And were tested. And waited some more. By two a.m., we were exhausted, hoping to get sent home. Instead, the doctor came in and said, “Your fluid levels are getting low, so we should just go ahead and deliver your baby. We’ll schedule the cesarean for six a.m.”

Wait. Wha . . . ?

This was it. In a few hours we were going to be parents. Annabelle wasn’t due until January 24. We weren’t ready! To cover our nerves, we joked: What about all the movies we were going to see during the next nine days? Pretty quickly, I came to this conclusion: As a forty-nine-year-old first-time father, I was grateful that I would get nine extra days with my daughter. And right now my main concern was Rebekah. I had done enough reading to be justifiably worried about what my wife was about to undergo. Rebekah and I prayed for a smooth delivery, a healthy baby girl, and a safe Rebekah.

A few hours later, doctors took Rebekah into the delivery room. A few moments after that, in my hospital scrubs, I followed. The room was full of happily chatting medical professionals and a battery of technology, with lights flashing and sounds beeping and buzzing reassuringly. I almost asked them to wheel in some more technology, even if it was unnecessary, just to make me feel better. I would take any comfort at that point.

I was led around behind Rebekah, who was lying on her back, a blue cloth curtain raised over her neck so neither she nor I could see the surgery. She was already numb from the waist down with the anesthetic, but saw me and groggily said, “Oh, good. It’s you.” I sat on a stool that was provided to me and held her hand and stroked her hair. Rebekah would later say she never felt pain per se but felt a great deal of pressure and discomfort, aware that her midsection was being manipulated in extreme ways as they pulled a baby out of her gut.

I was worried about Rebekah, although none of those attending to her seemed worried about anything. That actually was more soothing than all the technology. I was curious about the surgery. I had watched a fluoroscope—like an X-ray video—of my mother getting stents placed in her femoral arteries years earlier. It was fascinating. The doctor’s description of what she was doing to Rebekah beyond that blue curtain only made me want to see.

“Should Dad look?” I asked, beginning to rise off my stool.

“No!” shouted all eight or nine people in unison. I sat back down. In retrospect, I didn’t need to have the image of my wife being cut in two in my head. I still hadn’t been able to shake the interior shots of my wife I’d seen in Dr. Choi’s office back in Seoul.

In a matter of only a few minutes, it seemed, it was over. The doctor removed our baby girl from my wife’s midsection and handed her to a nurse. I heard her first—she screamed out a good cry—and then I peeked around the curtain in front of my wife’s face to see her placed on the scale, naked, wriggly, covered in gray slime. Our baby girl. She had the exact same turned-up nose that had so charmed us when it showed up in the ultrasound pictures.

“Ten fingers and ten toes!” the nurse gleefully announced.

I can’t and won’t attempt to write anything elegiac about the
first few moments a parent spends with their baby. It’s been written before and better by countless others. I’ll only make two observations: for me, it was like a switch had flipped in my head and, I guess, in my heart. Here was this tiny human whom I’d just met, whom I understood was made by God in the image of God, yet with whom I had no relationship in any way that we think of it. But I instinctively knew that I would do anything to protect her. I would take a bullet for her. In the coming days, I realized I could not allow even the
thought
of harm coming to her to slither into my mind. If even the first few motes of such a thought began forming, I found myself involuntarily shaking my head, trying to rattle them out, like sand in my ears.