Will people pay $150k for a Hyundai, however?
According to Hyundai's design boss, there's still a possibility it might build a supercar. Hak Soo Ha told Carscoops that the supercar is not as dead as we originally thought.
When asked whether Hyundai still has plans to build a supercar, Soo Ha provided a noncommittal answer. "There's been such efforts going on," said Soo Ha. "But at what point [do] we make it economically viable, or do we do product planning, or on what donor platform [will] we bring it to market, what powertrain, that's all kind of up in the air."
Rumors of the reported supercar date back to the introduction of the Hyundai Genesis Coupe, the first fun car the South Korean manufacturer produced and a fantastic used buy.
The former boss of Hyundai's N division, Albert Biermann, said the manufacturer first considered a supercar in 2017 but that it would have cost $150,000. To be blunt, Hyundai would have struggled to sell a car at that price.
The high cost was due to a bespoke carbon fiber chassis, but a lot has changed since then. Last year, Hyundai introduced the magnificent N Vision 74 hydrogen-powered concept. The N Vision 74 isn't just a rolling design exercise inspired by the original Pony concept. It's easy enough to spot going sideways in the South Korean brand's "Rolling Lab" promotional video. This promo video showed how much effort Hyundai is putting into making EVs and hydrogen-electric vehicles more engaging.
This ties in nicely with Soo Ha's follow-up comment, stating that Hyundai has started answering some of the questions he mentioned in his original statement.
Is the world ready for a Hyundai supercar? It wasn't back then, but it might be now. Thanks to platform sharing, it might not even cost that much. And if marketed correctly, it might even help the brand promote its hydrogen efforts while taking the N division a few additional steps up the ladder.
Instead of building a $150k halo car, internally known as the "Chairman's Car," Hyundai developed several affordable go-faster models to kick-start the N brand. Our current favorite is the Elantra N, but the Kona N and Veloster N are also sublime vehicles.
This strategy worked, and Hyundai is now a bona fide producer of performance cars that can take on the GTIs and Type Rs of the world. But will moneyed individuals looking for something more exotic be willing to part with their hard-earned bucks when the Porsche 911 and Chevrolet Corvette exist? These are the European and American benchmarks against which all new sporty machines will be measured.
Early adopters certainly will. BMW is currently working on the iX5 hydrogen-electric, five of which will eventually be available in the USA. Honda will introduce a hydrogen-electric CR-V in 2024.
Soo Ha's cryptic answer suggests that affordability is one of the main hurdles. Looking at what Hyundai has coming in the next few years, it could easily leverage an existing platform and build a production N 74. Biermann said ICE, battery-electric and hydrogen-electric were all powertrain options considered for the "Chairman's Car," which seems to be the case once again.
Only this time, Hyundai has a reputation for building highly respected performance cars, making the progression to a halo model feel a lot more seamless than it once was.
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