It’s a bold claim, but Hyundai’s vice president of design, SangYup Lee has told Automotive News that future cars from the Korean manufacturer will be “sexier than Alfa Romeos”.
Crikey. Sounds exciting and would certainly be cool for a carmaker probably still viewed by some of the trad Euro brands as an upstart newbie to be able to rock the drawing boards of the car designing establishment.
Lee said Hyundai’s entire design language is due for a shake-up and next year we would see the first production model based around the svelte Apple mouse/Tesla-esque lines of the Le Fil Rouge concept, which the company showed off at the Geneva Motor Show earlier this year.
“We want to maximise emotional value,” Lee said. “The Alfa Romeo and Maserati; those are really sexy cars, even the Germans got a lot of influence from the [Italian] cars. That emotional, sensuous beauty, you don’t find that in the volume brands. For Hyundai to be sexier than Alfa Romeo, this is the mission we want to achieve.”
Big words, certainly. But Lee should know his stuff. He was responsible for designing the 2010 Chevrolet Camaro concept and the C6 Corvette Stingray when he was at General Motors.
He’s also worked for one of the most “establishment” brands possible; Bentley, where he took out his jotter pad and drew them the EXP 10 Speed 6 concept in 2015. Not bad.
So, sexy Hyundais? We’ll have to wait and see
Volkswagen plans another S-Class rival — with batteries
Clearly even a big car company like Volkswagen AG can be guilty of carrying a chip on its broad shoulder.
How do we know this?
Because this week it announced its intention to launch a new large sedan designed to take on the car you’d turn to in the dictionary for a definition of a luxo-barge; the Mercedes-Benz S-Class.
Hmm. Okay chaps, but the last time you tried this, things didn’t go that well. Back in 2002 Volkswagen launched the Phaeton; a stretched Passat with extra lashings of wood and leather which didn’t capture hearts, let alone minds.
It did stay in production for an improbable 14 years though, so you can’t blame Wolfsburg for not trying.
Things are different this time though, the manufacturer insists. And indeed, they are: the concept car the eventual production sedan will be based on is the excellent — albeit stupidly named — I.D. Vizzion concept; part of the carmaker’s burgeoning I.D. electric sub-brand.
Designed from a functional point-of-view to take on the likes of the Tesla Model S, Volkswagen bigwigs have claimed they’re anticipating single-charge ranges of between 400km and 600km for their fully-electric I.D. models; all of which will be built on Volkswagen’s scaleable MEB platform which will allow for different wheelbases, battery sizes and drivetrain configurations.
All that aside though, the fact Volkswagen is still gunning for Mercedes’ S-Class suggests the relative failure of the Phaeton still smarts.
We’re pretty sure any fully electric sedan based around the I.D. Vizzion concept will prove something rather spesh. But here’s the more pertinent question: with most of the world buying SUVs these days, what does Volkswagen have to gain by spending so much time developing a long-wheelbase sedan? Well, aside from sticking it to those pesky Mercedes-Benz types, that is.
American Audi fans lament end of manual trans — poor them
Audi is set to announce it will no longer sell manual-transmission cars in the US from next year. Enthusiast drivers here can offer little sympathy, having not been able to buy a self-shifter from the four-ring brand for some time now.
DSG-style S-Tronic gearboxes are the norm here — and good too, in The Good Oil’s opinion — although their blanket presence still elicits grumbles from some corners.
But it’s the way of the world, with few manual transmission cars on offer in the NZ new-car market. Unless it’s a cab-chassis ute of the lowest order, or maybe an entry-level city car like a Yaris or Swift that is top of your shopping list, you’re going to have to strike the involvement of manually-selecting cogs from your must-haves.
All is not completely lost, however. Some performance carmakers still get it, with a handful of sports coupe options for all budgets — Toyota 86, Porsche 911 — still available with a manual trannie right off the showroom floor. Honda and Subaru are prepared to let their niche sports models (the Civic Type R and WRX/WRX STi pairing respectively) remain as nature and engineering intended.
But isn’t it interesting to see classified advertisements for used cars describing manual transmission as a selling point, whereas a decade or so ago, it would have been a failing.
Sorry America; Audi’s announcement is par for the course everywhere it would seem. Let’s hope it takes many years before the idea of shifting gears yourself becomes as archaic a notion as having a man running along in front of your conveyance with a red warning flag.