korean car engine performance claims

I have noticed of late that Korean car companies such as Hyundai and Kia have been publishing very good performance figures in their brochures.

The Hyundai Elantra 1.6 petrol engine pushes out 138hp and 167Nm which is higher than Japanese counter parts such as Toyota which it's 1.6 litre engine in the Altis only pushes out 120hp and 158Nm. This is the same for the Kia Carens 2.0 litre pushing out 177hp and 211Nm. This again is higher than the Honda Accord's 2.0 which pushes out 150hp and 198Nm.
The question now is whether these claims are accurate. Car companies have a tendency to publish engine horsepower rather than on wheel horsepower as the figures are higher. Transmission losses will result in lower figures. Only a handful of companies only publish lower figures than the actual which were the horsepower on wheel, BMW being one of them.

Hyundai recently was sued in the US for falsifying fuel consumption claims by over stating the figures. I have a gut feel that this may be true for the engine performance claims too. The suspicion came about from the slower acceleration times compared to Japanese rivals. This of course could be due to poorer transmission efficiency however Hyundai and Kia have moved on to better transmission systems which employ 6 forward gears vs Japanese rivals who are still using 4 and 5 forward gears transmissions.

The claims should be verified by Governing institutions as to qualify the accuracy of the figures. This is would eliminate the possibility of the car manufacturer misleading the consumer.