Hyundai is firmly focused on its exciting electric future, but it’s not above the occasional nostalgic glance backward.

The South Korean automaker unveiled a faithful recreation of the Pony Coupe Concept from 1974 last Friday at the Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este in Italy. The original two-door never went into production, and this version isn’t likely to either, but that doesn’t make the retro-futuristic sports car any less cool.

The Pony Coupe Concept may share a name with the Hyundai’s first car, but that’s about it. The prototype, which was designed by the legendary Giorgetto Giugiaro, made its debut at the Turin Motor Show in 1974. Like Giugiaro’s most famous creation, the DeLorean DMC-12, the two-door features a wedge shape and sharp lines. Unfortunately, when the Pony eventually did go into production it was a much more utilitarian vehicle that barely resembled the Italian’s vision. Despite this, the bold concept has long been an object of fascination for enthusiasts and was the primary visual influence for last year’s crowd-pleasing N Vision 74 concept.

To ensure that the reproduction was as accurate as possible, Hyundai brought in Giugiaro to oversee the project. Under the Italdesign cofounder’s watchful eye, the vehicle was completely rebuilt utilizing the original methods and materials used back in the ‘70s. Every aspect of the car, from its headlights to its instrument panel to its wheels, looks exactly as it would have brand new. Even the power train—a 1.3-liter inline-four that produces just 82 hp—is the same.

“The restoration of this unique vehicle is a milestone in Hyundai’s history,” Luc Donckerwolke, the automaker’s president and chief creative officer, said in a statement. “It represents our beginnings and our commitment to the future. It serves as a legacy for generations to come.”

As cool as the Pony Coupe Concept may look, you shouldn’t expect to see it on the road anytime soon. All signs point to the angular sports car being a one-off. The same goes for the N Vision 74 concept that it inspired, despite recent rumors saying otherwise. Still, there’s no denying that the Pony Coupe Concept will continue to hold a special spot in Hyundai’s heart for years to come.

Source: Rob Report

Imagine if, 10 years ago, someone had said to you, in a decade’s time, the car manufacturer you’d most admire would be Hyundai. You’d giggle yourself clean out of your Recaro.

The only way your past self could see that fanciful statement being true – that the Korean maker of ordinary economy hatchbacks (with only a light dusting of rallying in its history) could go from Pony to thoroughbred in such a short time – is if the world received an almighty shake-up.

Thanks to a global pandemic, a complete eradication of dignity in our world leaders and some of our long-held human rights being at risk, it feels very much like a different planet now than 10 years ago.

But it’s not this cultural reset that has made us look at Hyundai differently. No, it’s Hyundai that’s changed dramatically, and the automaker was on this trajectory way before such major world events forced their way into our lives.

It was 2016, with the launch of Hyundai’s performance brand, N, that set the tone for the company’s reinvention. And we were not prepared. Not at all.

I covered the reveal of the first N, the i30 N. It shows how little faith we had in Hyundai that I, the most junior member of staff of the magazine I was working on at the time, was sent to see its unveiling. We thought we knew what was coming.

You see, we’d driven Hyundai’s sister brand’s performance model, the Kia Proceed GT. This warm hatch was well balanced and peppy. It was nice. But you didn’t want one.

There was the Kia Stinger, too. This car showed real promise. It had the basis of an incredible performer, but it was finished with a mass-market glaze – the sort that leaves a bitter aftertaste in the mouth of car lovers.

So we knew what to expect from this new Hyundai hot hatch. A sporty hatchback, but nothing that would worry a VW Golf GTI, and something that wouldn’t see where a Renaultsport product had gone.

But boy were we wrong. The i30 N was a hot hatch done right. Made just the way you’d want it. It was dripping with touches that could only have come from people who love performance cars. At tick-over it sounded just like a WRC car skulking around a service area. To me, the triangular brake light screamed Manta 400 bonnet vent.

And it was engineered properly. It had a limited-slip differential and a tough chassis. It gripped when you wanted it to; it slipped when you didn’t. The entire steering system was new because the regular i30’s wasn’t rigid enough and didn’t provide sufficient feel.

That latter point isn’t the sexiest fact, but that’s the sort of in-depth and expensive modification that rarely gets past a car company’s accountants. It shows how dedicated Hyundai was to making the i30 N a proper hot hatch contender. Maybe, even at the expense of any profit. I’ve always assumed that Hyundai loses money on the i30 N given it feels so exquisitely engineered.

It’s worth the lack of profit, though, because the i30 is the foundation of the N brand. If it wasn’t as strong, if it was, say, like the Kia Proceed GT, then we wouldn’t be applauding it now.

The i30 N was the spark that made us all turn our heads east and pay attention to Hyundai. The Kona, Veloster and i20 have all received the N treatment with much the same success as the original.

Then there are the non-performance Hyundai models that we just can’t take our eyes off. The Ioniq 5 might be an electric hatchback – a huge one at that – but it looks like it should be restricted to a slowly rotating turntable – it’s too futuristic to be a car you can just buy. Hyundai’s van, the Staria, is equally mystifying. Both are stop-you-in-the-street stunning… a hatchback and a van.

Then we get onto Hyundai’s actual concept cars and prototypes. These sorts of cars, fanciful never-going-to-make-it-to-production machines, are rarely exciting. Often wonderful looking, undoubtedly, but they’re usually designed to be exhibited at stale motor shows. Their sole purpose to boast about spurious new technology and get industry and design guys hot under their indoor scarves.

Hyundai didn’t get that memo. The Korean brand’s concepts want to show us – people who actually buy and love cars, not industry design types and futurologists – where the company is heading. Hyundai’s prototypes often have the whiff of burnt rubber about them, brilliantly so.

To showcase its future drivetrains, Hyundai has stuffed its electric motors into radically redeveloped Velosters to make not one, but two mid-engined, rear-wheel drive track cars in the form of the N ETCR and the RM20e. The latter has over 800hp.

One of the company’s most bizarre creations is the iMax N, a high-performance drifting eight-seater van. Someone at Hyundai is a Dajiban fan, clearly.

Then there’s the more sedate, but no less captivating, Grandeur restomod that Hyundai made in 2021. An original Grandeur saloon, but with the sheen, elegance and matrix lights from a 1980s vision of the future. It’s retro without seeming gaudy, celebratory without being attention seeking, and humorous without being a joke. It’s perfectly judged.

Despite these triumphs, Hyundai has managed to outdo itself recently. In early 2022, it launched two concepts that harness new-world tech and unleash it in a way that seems to have – if we didn’t know better – Speedhunters approval stamped all over it.

First is the RN22e, essentially an N version of Hyundai’s swooping Ioniq 6 saloon. In true loveable N-style, it’s in light blue, has plenty of power (569hp) from two electric motors, one for each axle, and torque vectoring at the rear. It’s the way it looks that’s most astounding, though. There’s never been a GT3 race car made from a saloon, because that would be absurd. But it would look incredible and we know that because that’s exactly what the RN22e looks like. Massive wing, huge diffuser, wide stance, blistered arches and everything.

The best of these two concepts, however, is the N Vision 74. It combines the retro styling, high performance and sheer joyous attitude of all the Hyundai concepts we’ve touched on and stuffs those attributes into a wild, wedge-shaped package.

The basis for the N Vision 74 is a Hyundai Pony Coupé concept designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro for the Turin Motor Show of, yes you guessed it, 1974. An updated, modernised and electric version of this crisp coupé would have been lovely. It would have got us talking and sharing a few pics online, just as the Grandeur restomod did.

But Hyundai didn’t leave it there and boy are we grateful. It took the ’70s concept and did what, well, any of us would do to it. What we’d do to it if we had an unlimited budget and the right combination of reverence and disrespect for the company’s heritage.

The N Vision 74 has a 1970s Group 5 silhouette-style body kit. Big wide box arches that finish abruptly at the doors to leave gaping cooling holes fore and aft. Its wheels are like a cleaned-up version of the turbofans found on a Trans Am Audi 200 Quattro, big and smooth. And, so it doesn’t simply hark bark to race highlights from the past century, it has a massive modern aero package, including a wing, diffuser and splitter.

Why it needs quite so much downforce is perplexing, because the official pictures show it being backed into corners, sideways, well before any apex. I know the images are not real, just digital renders, but pics like this show Hyundai’s intent. This is how it wants you to see its cars, at full opposite lock. That’s another thing about Hyundai you have to admire.

Hyundai seems determined to prove that the future, V8 and petrol-less, will still be irresponsibly fun. The N Vision 74 has two electric motors, but unlike the RN22e, they’re both for the back axle to make pulverising rubber much easier. It’s hydrogen-powered too, our favourite ‘new’ form of propulsion. None of that lengthy charge time.

It seems as though there’s someone like us – someone with Eurobeat punctuated by 4A-GE induction noise constantly playing in our heads – that’s making decisions at Hyundai. Heck, more than one person. It seems like there’s a team of people who really love cars there.

That’s why I admire Hyundai right now. Each one of its concepts or performance cars feels as though one of your car mates is behind it. You half expect that each new car will be unveiled in the same way a friend would announce when they’ve bought, made or done something silly. Rather than a pompous PDF press release, you’d get a WhatsApp with a pic and a simple ‘check this out’.

Source: Speedhunters.com

J.D. Power has released its annual U.S. Tech Experience Index for 2022, ranking the most innovative automakers and models on the market and calling out the features owners love and love to hate. And after taking the top spots of the 2022 Vehicle Dependability Study, Korean sister brands Genesis, Hyundai and Kia find themselves at the top of the chart as the innovative brands in their respective segments.

A companion piece to J.D. Power's Initial Quality Study, the Tech Experience Index is based on the responses of 84,165 owners of new 2022 model year vehicles surveyed after 90 days of ownership. The survey seeks to find what technologies owners find the most desirable and which ones frustrate them the most. Along the way, the automakers themselves are ranked by a calculated Innovation Index to determine which ones are most successfully introducing the best new tech. 

J.D. Power's analysts calls new vehicle technology a "double-edged sword," stating that tech is one of the leading reasons for purchasing a new car and that automakers must continue to innovate or risk losing their competitive edge. However, inelegant implementation of tech or a high occurrence of problems could cause users to abandon a technology or even a brand outright. These are tricky waters and not everyone's doing a great job navigating them.

Korean brands lead innovation

Crunching the numbers, J.D. Power assigns each automaker an Innovation Index score scaled from 0-1,000, higher being better. American electric vehicle company Tesla would have been the outright winner with an unofficial score of 681 points. However, because Tesla blocks JPD's access to owner information in certain states, the automaker finds itself ineligible for awards. Swedish premium EV brand Polestar also finds itself ineligible with an unofficial score of 608 points.

That leaves room for the Korean luxury upstart Genesis to slide in and once again take the crown for the highest officially ranked premium and overall brand with an Innovation index of 643. The G70 and GV70 are best-in-classes vehicles packed with user-friendly cabin and driver aid technologies; no wonder the brand finds itself the survey's king of this hill. The next highest ranked premium brands are Cadillac (584), known for its Super Cruise hands-free highway assist tech, and Mercedes-Benz (539) which launched the high-tech, electric EQS this year.

Korean brands continue to dominate among the mass-market brands with Hyundai leading the pack with 534 points — not too far behind Benz. These brands share many key technologies with Genesis, hence the similarly high score. Third-place is a three-way tie (482) between Buick, GMC and Subaru.

For context, the industry average sits at a calculated Innovation Index of 486 points. And because I know you're curious, the lowest ranked brands are Porsche (439), Honda and Chrysler (tied at 429) with Mazda being the least innovative brand of 2022 with its 387 Innovation Index — which makes sense given Mazda's minimalist approach to tech.

The biggest loser

Fingerprint readers were found to be the most problematic technology probed with 54.3 problems found per 100 vehicles surveyed as part of the study. That makes it the lowest-performing tech in the study's history with the lowest overall satisfaction score, dethroning the previous record-holder: gesture controls.

Biometric fingerprint authentication is most commonly used for login on infotainment suites like Mercedes-Benz's User Experience that support multiple users or, more rarely, to lock or unlock a vehicle. Considering how well fingerprint readers have been implemented in smartphones, tablets and personal computers, the surveyed users' low ranking of the tech is surprising. It's possible they were displeased with the execution of the tech in cars or, perhaps, just find too complicated in contrast to other authentication technologies, such as phone-based digital key tech — which was the third-highest ranked technology surveyed.

Award-winning technologies

No surprise, the technologies that gave users the least trouble were the most simple in concept and execution. The Cadillac Escalade and Subaru Ascent each took home Advanced Technology Convenience Awards in the premium and mass-market categories, respectively, for camera rear-view mirror technology that allows users to flip a switch to change the optical mirror at the top of the windshield to a camera view via a screen hidden within the glass. Cadillac was recognized last year for the same tech.

Accolades for "emerging automation" or driver aid technology went to the premium Lexus IS for its front cross traffic warning system and the mass-market Mitsubishi Outlander for its implementation of reverse automatic emergency braking. Again, not the most cutting edge features — both have been around for years now — but trouble-free implementations of proven tech that left surveyed customers satisfied.

J.D. Power also awarded the Mini Cooper (presumably the fully-electric model) an energy and sustainability award for its one-pedal driving mode. This EV feature promotes maximum range-extending regenerative braking when lifting the accelerator pedal, so much so that the car can be brought to a stop often without touching the friction brakes. Elsewhere in the BMW Group, the BMW X3 received recognition for its phone-based digital key tech.

Want to know where your favorite automaker ended up and why? Check out the full J.D. Power 2022 U.S. Tech Experience Index study for more details.

Source for original article: Cnet