My parents have just bought a new Hyundai 'Tucson', for which I have checked to see if they are sane, as it is a terrible car. However on first looking at the car I noticed something was a bit familiar. On closer inspection I realised the alloys were in a bad way, ripping off the 'axe' style 5 spoke diamond cut design of the 'Austin alloys on my GTI. You could see they have changed the thickness of the diamond cut on each spoke, but the 'axe' styling was definitely the same idea as the GTI wheels.
Check them out yourselves on Google and see whether you think the same.
You'll find this a lot with the Korean cars - they're trying very hard to look German at the moment. Most of the Hyundai cars are trying to look either BMW or Audi, this started with the first Hyundai i30 years ago mimicking a 1st gen BMW 1 series, why copy a pig ugly car? The current Hyundai grille shape is almost an exact copy of Audi's.
A few months ago I had to pick up an i40 in Dublin airport to see an Irish client. On the outside it looked a nice solid German motor - the front end of an Audi A4, the back end of a BMW 5 series (although the side profile looked a bit Ford Mondeo). Inside though it was obvious where the money had been saved, very cheap interior. On the door grab handles there were plastic bits meant to look like leather - even the stitching was moulded on.
Some are seduced by the long warranties, thinking that it is a measure of the company's confidence in the reliability of the product, but in reality it is built into the price - Korean cars aren't especially cheap any more.
Of course there is a lot of copying going on all over, not just with the Koreans. Every tiny car out there right now is trying to look like a Fiat 500 (New Renault Twingo and Vauxhall Adam especially), and there are a lot of Scirocco lookalikes (the Astra GTC, Merc A-class, current Renault Clio, Hyundai Veloster).
