Turbocharged drift car testing tires at Hankook Tire's testing facility.
Where there's smoke there's fire, goes the old saying, and under the hood of the turbocharged drift car at Hankook Tire's massive testing facility, there was both.
But instead of calling off the smoky demonstration of barbaric dry pavement tire abuse on the skidpad - or reactively stepping well back from those flames, as most of us did - the driver and a technician calmly hand pumped a fine dose of water towards the heart of the white-hot aftermarket turbo. The licking flames were soon replaced by new plumes of white smoke.
Okay, who's next, went the call from the driver.
Clearly, this was not the first turbo he had set alight, nor was it the first set of Hankook Ventus V12 evo ultra-high performance tires he would later shred in the process.
Hankook the tire company has also been on fire lately, corporately speaking, climbing up the global tire sales charts, sales soaring 18 per cent in 2009, even in the midst of a global financial crisis that rocked the world's most established auto makers. It was actually the only tire maker to achieve a sales increase last year, mimicking the performance of one of its best customers, Hyundai. In 2001, Hankook ranked outside the top 10 tire makers, 11th in terms of overall sales, but by the end of 2007, it reached number seven, a spot it held at the end of last year.
Company officials have their eyes set on breaking into the top five, which would put it ahead of respected European tire makers such as Pirelli - which increased its prestige quotient in late June when it was confirmed that Pirelli will become the sole tire supplier to the Formula One circuit for the next three years, starting in 2011.
Being the most popular tire brand in South Korea has helped, as the country has weathered the global economic crisis well, especially compared to its Japanese neighbours. Like many South Korean businesses, Hankook has been helped by the relatively low value of the won since 2008, making its exports more competitive internationally, helping to boost sales to cash-strapped car companies and neighbouring China alike.
But increased investment in research and development has also garnered a rapidly increasing reputation for quality and performance at a reasonable price.
To expand its testing abilities, it opened two large test tracks in the past five years at its huge R&D facility in Daejeon, about a two-hour drive south of Seoul. The main one is called the G'Trac, on which Hankook does handling, ride, braking and noise tests. But the more entertaining one, based on seat time on portions of both, was the G'Trac Aqua, one of only a handful of multi-surfaced, scientifically watered wet tracks owned by a tire maker around the world.
This track is highlighted by a circular wet skidpad featuring three different pavement types, all progressively more slippery as you approach the centre of the circle. By the time you hit the splashy cobblestones towards the inside of this ring, you may as well be on ice, especially at the wheel of the previous drift car, a specially prepped rear-wheel-drive Hyundai Genesis Coupe.
Maybe that's why the drift folks tending to the previous turbo fire were so calm: if their hand pump ran out of water, a quick lap of this nearby wet track would surely douse the flames before they reached other combustible portions of the car.
Hankook executives confidently predict that the global car industry is starting to appreciate the results of all this R&D, not only in Korea, but at its technical centres in Akron, Ohio (hello Goodyear), Hanover, Germany (home to rival Continental), in China and a smaller centre in Japan. The company says it pours 5 per cent of all revenues into technical research, and with $4-billion (U.S.) in revenue last year, there are signs that the auto industry is beginning to accept Hankook as a rising power in the premium tire market.
Audi was the first of the main luxury manufacturers that Hankook started supplying tires to in 2008, mostly for the A3, thanks to a long association with Volkswagen, as well as Hyundai and Kia. But it also does business with GM and Ford, and just recently announced that it would be supplying the 20-inch up-market tires for the Oakville, Ont.-built Lincoln MKT starting this fall, its largest tire it has supplied for a North American vehicle.
"Quality is the key," Hankook CEO and vice-chairman Seung Hwa Suh said in a roundtable with international members of the press in Seoul recently. "Price is very important too, but without quality, they wouldn't order our tires."
With two production plants in South Korea, two in China, one in Hungary and another coming onstream in 2011 in China, the firm is planning to continue its rapid growth rate, which has averaged 13.9 per cent globally from 2000 to 2009. Tire industry powerhouse Michelin took note of this growth early this decade, buying up 10 per cent of Hankook, but this does not involve any executive influence or technical sharing, Suh insists. "They bought our shares on the free market, like anybody else."
In Canada, price-wise, the tires fall into the second tier of products behind the latest tires from Michelin, Bridgestone, Goodyear or Pirelli, said Joseph Park, communications manager for Hankook Tire Canada, competing with BF Goodrich and Continental on both price and performance.
"We're now entering Tier 2," said Park, leaving behind cheaper and less-advanced competition from Kuhmo, Cooper and other lesser-known brands.
Hankook has now muscled itself into discussions about the best of these so-called bargain brands, its Ventus V12 evo coming in second place to the Dunlop Direzza Sport Star Spec tire in a Car and Driver comparison in 2009 between nine tier-two-priced ultra-high performance 225/45R17 tires. It landed at the top of the bargain heap in wet performance, behind only the Michelin Pilot Sport PS2 the magazine brought along as a benchmark. Plus the Michelins' $192 (U.S.) price was much higher than the Hankooks' $106 tab.
Park admits that the Canadian price of Hankooks have typically been close to 50 per cent higher than in the United States, where more sales mean more distribution centres and lower transport costs. But that 50 per cent figure is decreasing, says Park, to be helped by two new warehouses in Canada - in Brampton, Ont., and Richmond, B.C.
globedrive@globeandmail.com
An earlier online version of this story incorrectly stated that Hankook had a production plant coming onstream in 2011 in Germany. This online version has been corrected.