Art for Race Fans

A worldwide slowdown of automotive sales has hit South Korean carmakers especially hard. Combined sales of Hyundai, Daewoo, and SsangYong declined 13 percent in December, leading to talks of a South Korean government bailout for their own automakers. Wait a minute -- what's a SsangYong?

For those narrow-minded American automotive enthusiasts who ignore any non-exotic that can't be purchased stateside, SsangYong is the fifth largest automaker in South Korea and was founded to build American Jeeps during the Korean War. They're also teetering on the brink of collapse. Of course, you'd already know that if you wasted hours at your desk deciding whether the 1990s-S-class-meets-1980s-E-Class Chairman Cm600S looks better in Cyber Grey or Pertinent Silver.

It seems that SsangYong got into trouble when demand for their lineup of outdated luxury sedans and bizarrely styled SUVs and MPVs started slipping. As a result, sales dropped by more than half. Sound familiar?

China's Shanghai Automotive Industrial Group (SAIC) bought a majority stake in SsangYong in 2004 promising to invest in building new models that would help the Korean carmaker compete at a global level. Instead, SAIC took advantage of SsangYong's expertise in building SUVs while letting their domestic lineup languish. "SAIC had promised to invest 1.2 trillion won in Ssangyong and expand the production lineup by 300,000 vehicles, but none of those promises were kept," union leader Han Sang-kyun told the Korea Times.

Maybe that's why the Korean Development Bank (KDB) balked when SsangYong sidestepped their corporate parent and asked the Korean government for a $456 million bailout. Yesterday SAIC agreed to invest $45 million in SsangYong, but the company's troubles aren't over. A threat of massive layoffs has assembly line workers voting on whether to walk off the job as soon as this week. We'll keep our eye on the situation, but we're pretty sure we won't see a Rodius driving us to a US airport anytime soon.

Photo courtesy SsangYong.