What caught our attention
Rank is the usual shorthand for competitive standing. Hyundai’s rank did not change across the year, which on its own would suggest a quiet twelve months.
The distance between Hyundai and the brands around it tells a different story.
What BII shows
Buying Intent
Buying Intent: 218.3 to 816.2, Aug ’25 to Aug ’26 · +274% YoY.
Category rank
Category rank: #3 to #3, Aug ’25 to Aug ’26 · unchanged.
Distance to #2
Distance to #2: 4.8%, Aug ’26 · Hyundai behind #2, Maruti Suzuki.
Why this matters
A rank is an order, not a distance. A brand can keep the same position while moving from a distant third to a close contender for second — or the reverse.
Teams that report only rank can miss a shift in competitive strength that is already visible in consumers’ keenness to buy. For Hyundai in Aug ’26, the more useful reading is how narrow the gap to #2 has become.
What we would watch next
BII reads every brand every month, so each of these can be followed as it develops.
- Whether the 4.8% gap to #2 narrows or widens over the coming months.
- Whether Brand Trust and Brand Desire moved with Buying Intent, or one of them carried more of the rise.
- How the distance to the brands below Hyundai changed over the same period.
How BII can be used this way
Competitive-distance tracking
BII reads every brand’s Buying Intent against the competitors in its category each month. That shows not only where a brand ranks, but how far it sits from the brands above and below it.
A closing or widening gap becomes visible before the rank itself changes.
See the six ways brands use BIIMethod and caveats
- Period
- Aug ’25 compared with Aug ’26.
- Category
- Passenger vehicles.
- Scope
- BII’s monthly national reading across the 16 cities it covers.
- Reading
- Rank is position within the category by Buying Intent. The 4.8% distance compares Hyundai with the #2 brand, Maruti Suzuki, in Aug ’26. Figures describe what moved, not why.
Independent BII analyses. Brands featured are selected because we find the market development noteworthy; inclusion does not imply a client relationship.