Hyundai Automobile

In the beginning, there was Hyundai, and it was without form, and darkness was upon the face of the brand. And it's still pretty dark. Yes, we're all very impressed with Hyundai's robust sales numbers, the company's monster 10-year warranty and the new Hyundai Genesis sedan, which was voted 2009 North American Car of the Year by a group of powerful and influential automotive journalists who were found sleeping under a bridge. But what does the brand mean?

News and notes from the North American International Auto Show in Detroit on Monday: Toyota Motor Corp. finally lifted the veil on its completely redesigned Prius. The big news: 50 miles per gallon. Spy shots leaked not long ago, but Toyota's Bob Carter, group division head and general manager, did titillate the standing-room-only audience with a few details about the new vehicle, due out in the U.S. and Japan this spring.

The chocolate-brown leather is softer than a Hershey bar in a cop's back pocket. The topstitched upholstery across the dash and doors seems sewn with a needle borrowed from Miuccia Prada. The interior wood accents are carved from the most majestic lumber in the old-growth faux forest. If you didn't know better -- and really, Hyundai would prefer you didn't know better -- you'd think the South Korean company had been at this luxury-car business a long time.

Hyundai Motor America named Jong Eun Kim its new head of North American operations Monday -- the latest in a string of executive shifts amid stalling U.S. sales. Kim, who takes his new post Jan. 1, will replace Ok Suk Koh, who will top Chinese operations for Kia Motors Corp. Hyundai is the largest stakeholder in Kia. Hyundai spokesman Jim Trainor called the change a "normal rotation, not unusual to the way Hyundai does business."

H\o7IS\f7 nickname is M.K., but you can call him Johnny Drama. On Monday, Chung Mong-koo -- the imperious, quality- obsessed chairman of Hyundai-Kia Automotive Group, who in seven years transformed the sleepy South Korean company into an automaking powerhouse -- admitted being involved in an embezzlement scheme that, according to prosecutors, funneled $136 million to a political slush fund. Chung was arrested April 28 after a monthlong investigation and has been in jail ever since.