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In terms of relative success, there can be no doubt that the Hyundai Motor company has weathered the current “Great Recession” far better than many of its competitors. The South Korean automaker has been unparalleled in its successes, even increasing its global market share from just over four percent to over five percent in the last year, while American competitors like Chrysler and General Motors languished in bankruptcy court and relied heavily upon government support to stay afloat. Also, in an unprecedented bit of good luck, Hyundai received a massive profit off the back of the weak Korean unit of currency, and put it to excellent use in a lavish ad campaign worldwide to promote its vehicles. A few days ago, the company announced that its net profits had doubled to a record of over two and a half billion dollars last year. Hyundai sold over three million cars globally last year, which is an increase of almost twelve percent from the year before. And analysts believe that Hyundai’s star is set to rise even higher: researcher J.D. Power & Associates last year named Hyundai the top non-luxury brand for new cars in the U.S., ahead of Toyota, Honda, and Ford. Is it time for Hyundai to ascend to the title of one of the best-selling cars in the United States.

Now, it looks as though Hyundai might be receiving another stroke of good fortune. This time it would happen off the back of its stumbling competitor, the Japanese Toyota company. Last week, Toyota announced the recall of over two million of its best-selling cars and trucks due to a faulty gas pedal design that had caused uncontrollable acceleration in some tragic situations. The sale restrictions and recall of over five million vehicles has shaken consumer confidence in the best-selling auto brand in America, leaving everyone else eager to swoop in and scoop up Toyota’s disillusioned followed. Hyundai seems especially poised to capitalize on the Toyota crisis right now.

That’s because Hyundai had providentially just launched a fresh ad campaign focused on quality at the same time that the recall over at Toyota was announced. Toyota’s reputation is based in large part around the perception of outstanding quality of reliability and dependability that the automaker has enjoyed for years. With consumer faith in that quality shaken, Hyundai is especially well situated in light of its unrelated campaign having to do with the improved quality of its models. The jewel in Hyundai’s cap right now is its redesigned Sonata family-sized sedan. If the Sonata could attract some disenchanted prospective buyers of the previously monolithic Camry and Corolla models, Hyundai could really get a huge boost.

Experts’ only warning is that Hyundai needs to be careful to avoid falling headlong into the same trap that swallowed Toyota. Expanding at a breakneck speed has great potential rewards, but a compromise in quality will only hurt Hyundai in the long run. And “breakneck” is definitely the word for it: Hyundai and it’s subsidiary Kia division are on track to sell over five point four million units this year, up from four point six million last year and over double what it sold in 2000. A spokesperson for the government-funded think tank Korea Institute for Industrial Economics & Trade in Seoul, Lee Hang Koo, warns that this business model follows Toyota too closely for his liking. It’s not that Koo expects Hyundai will run into any major quality issues at any point in the immediate future, since Hyundai is much smaller right now and still has a much tighter control over its supplier chain. While Toyota has off-shored many of its assembly plants and has suppliers in a whole different country, Hyundai makes sure that suppliers are located close to its overseas assemblers.

Hyundai definitely isn’t planning on slowing down its epic growth anytime in the near future. Company execs have goals of stepping up growth tremendously in the United States by at least eight percent this year. Pretty heady stuff, when you consider that overall demand for new cars in the United States fell by about twenty-one percent last year.

Part of the plan to make that dream a reality is to fall heavily upon the redesigned Sonata, a basket into which Hyundai is placing plenty of its eggs right now. Experts call the Sonata the “standard bearer” for Hyundai’s new focus on quality and strength of design. Over half of the passenger cars sold in America are mid-sized sedans, and many of those sold are by Japanese automakers. The Sonata could be Hyundai’s in right at the top, although it faces stiff competition by strong American comers like the Ford Fusion. But Hyundai has brass in its pocket in terms of its marketing pitch. It won’t woo buyers with cash incentives to trade in their Toyota, like GM and Ford. Instead, it will take the form of “big voices in big places,” says Vice-President Joel Ewanick, Hyundai’s U.S. marketing chief. Hyundai’s big-money ads will be visible during the Super Bowl (the biggest marketing blitz of the year) and the Academy Awards later this winter, and then all throughout the summer. Ewanick says that the ads will focus on Hyundai’s incredible value compared with the Camry and other competing family sedans in the areas of fuel efficiency, horsepower, amenities, and price. That last one just can’t be overstated – the Sonata will be priced below twenty thousand dollars.

It’s estimated that Hyundai will have poured over one hundred sixty million dollars on the Sonata this year, which represents a strong faith in the value of this auto. The company’s chief financial officer, Lee Won Hee, is confident that the Sonata will give Hyundai a considerable sales boost this year. Hee wants to see an incremental increase in Hyundai’s United States market share by year’s end, although he recognizes that his company will face stiff competition in that area as other companies begin to recover slowly from the economic slump. But Hyundai will still have to use caution and learn from Toyota’s mistakes if it ever wants a shot at toppling the reigning giant of worldwide auto manufacturing.