HYUNDAI N VISION

WHERE WE'RE GOING, WE DON'T NEED PETROL

- ANDY ENRIGHT

When you don’t respect your past, you cannot really define who you are in the present, and you don’t have a vision for the future.” In that one quote, Hyundai’s design chief SangYup Lee spears the rationale behind the Hyundai N Vision 74. To most, it’s a stunning 1980s homage, its melange of warm and fuzzy influences dialling straight into the sharp creases and box-arch aesthetic of the era. You might see DeLorean DMC-12 or Volkswagen Scirocco Mk2 in some of the angles, blended with typical Japanese rear-drive coupe proportions. With its rear window louvre, pixellated theme and BMW E34 M5-style turbofan wheels, it would have been easy for the N Vision 74 to lapse into pastiche. It’s not subtle but it is drop-dead desirable.

But beyond the overdose of knowing post-modernism, there’s both narrative and nuance behind the design. Hyundai justifies its existence by pointing to the original 1974 Pony Coupe show car, a neat piece of ferrous origami that came from the studio of Giorgetto Giugiaro. While the show car was all angles, much like a razor-sharpened Renault 15, the production car that followed was a good deal more sensible, a pragmatic piece of design based on costs, capabilities and what the Pony needed to do to establish itself in a competitive market. Giugiaro himself realised the challenges of that assignment.