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In your opinion, what vehicle brand has showed the greatest improvement/innovation/product lineup from the early '00's to the current year? You can include vehicles that are being released this year.
I feel Buick has probably done the greatest turnaround job going from a senior-citizens only brand with absolutely nothing interesting to having numerous, award-winning vehicles and coming out with very attractive, new designs that I'd be more than pleased to keep in my garage.
Buick is certainly up there. The others that would come to mind would be Hyundai/KIA and Ford. Of course, being a Ford guy, I never really had a BAD opinion about them, but they've really picked up lately. Right or wrong, they were in the right spot when the economy took a dump (people started to want to buy domestic again but DIDN'T want to give money to GM and Chrysler because of the bailouts) and they've capitalized on it.
That's a tough one. I narrowed it down to: Buick, Cadillac, Ford and Hyundai/Kia before I ultimately picked Cadillac.
Ford certainly pulled themselves up by the boot straps so to speak and saved the company from what was essentially an impending bankruptcy, but they still didn't necessarily "reinvent" themselves as much as they got out of their own way.
Buick, has certainly done an image 180, but their success has been mostly contained to the past year or so. One or two good years does not a decade make.
Hyundai/Kia, has trucked along, steadily improving their products for a long time. The Hyundai brand is now solidly considered a mainstream offering and not the sub-mainstream brand it was before. Still, their recent success is very recent.
That leaves Cadillac. Over the past decade, this is the brand that I think has come the farthest. They went from a joke to a serious competitor in one of the most difficult auto markets, luxury. They brought the brand back while still making it unique and not falling for cookie cutter copies of other segment cars. The Cadillac name means something again and that had been lost for many years. For a company whose products were thought of as nothing more than dressed up Chevy's in the not so distant past to now be compared to BMW, Mercedes, Lexus and Audi, says a lot.
On the list, I would say Cadillac, then Ford, would rank as the most improved in the last decade.
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All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.
~William Shakespeare (As You Like It Act II, Scene VII)
I narrowed it down to Hyundai and Kia and ultimately went with Hyundai. In the past 10-15 years their cars have gone from bottom of the barrel cars that were not pretty to look at and had little to no resale value, to stylish cars that have increased in specs and allure to customers.
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