Hyundai Hopes Rock Gets Its Sales Rolling : Marketing: The South Korean auto maker has hired Iggy Pop for a concert tour of college campuses to promote its new Scoupe sports car.

Hyundai does not sell little deuce coupes or pink Cadillacs, but that isn’t stopping the South Korean auto maker from looking to rock ‘n’ roll to put the beat back in its U.S. car sales.

In an attempt to reach college-age car buyers, Hyundai Motor America said Wednesday that it has hired pop star Iggy Pop for a 20-campus concert tour in the eastern United States to promote its new Scoupe sports car.

“We’re after the college market,” said Bruce Goren, a company spokesman. “College students do buy quite a few automobiles.”

The concert tour, which will run through October, comes as Hyundai seeks to forge a classier image to revive sagging U.S. sales. The company is now emphasizing the luxury features on stylish new models such as the $8,395 Scoupe to try to dispel Hyundai’s image as a maker only of no-frills cars such as the Excel. The Excel was introduced in the United States four years ago.

Its economy-car reputation has, however, made Hyundais popular among younger buyers, particularly college students. And it is is a lucrative market.

Twenty percent of college students say they plan to buy a new car in the next 18 months, according to Hyundai. Perhaps more important, young buyers offer a car maker the opportunity to build buyer loyalty--much the way that Honda enraptured college buyers in the 1970s with its tiny, boxy Civics.

But reaching the college audience is easier said than done, Goren said.

Most college students do not listen to the radio during peak commuting periods, and they are not regular television watchers. But they are avid pop-music fans.

By sponsoring a rock music tour, Hyundai hopes to emphasize a youthful image.

“What we’re doing is enhancing our image to let people know that Hyundai is not the 1986 Excel,” Goren said. “Music is very credible and very important to (the college student) lifestyle.”

Although Detroit car makers have sponsored such mainstream artists as the Beach Boys in the past, Hyundai is being a little more adventurous. Pop, who will appear with the French rock group Mano Negra, is associated mainly with punk rock.

Pop gained notoriety for, among other things, on-stage theatrics as such cutting himself with pieces of broken glass and pouring hot wax on himself.

With its U.S. sales slipping, Hyundai is apparently willing to take some chances. Hyundai’s share of the U.S. auto market has fallen from 2.6% in 1987 to 1.9% during the first eight months of 1990.

“Hyundai needs all the advertising and marketing it can get right now,” said Arvid Jouppi, an auto industry analyst in Michigan.

George Peterson, president of AutoPacific, an auto marketing and consulting firm in Santa Ana, said the concert tour will reintroduce Hyundai to the market segment it needs most.

“One of their primary buyer groups is younger-age people, and this will allow them to communicate their products to people who should be ready, willing and able to buy the car,” Peterson said. “Iggy Pop should help them do that.”