Hyundai Shows Grandeur Heritage Concept, Seems Tailor Made for TTAC Readers

We haven’t built a loyal readership without knowing a thing or two about what makes you lot tick. Rusty old Ford Rangers rank pretty high on the list. Phil’s adventures at his local junkyard, too. And, oh yeah – big square sedans from the 1980s.

This is why we’re finally publishing pictures of this Hyundai concept, even though it dropped earlier this week and parroted by every cab blog from Anchorage to Zephyrhills. If anyone can appreciate what Hyundai has done with this one-off EV, it’s the Best & Brightest.

This is also something of an interesting break for Hyundai since Korean companies aren’t generally into gazing at their past efforts or rooting around the corporate closet for a dose of retro-cool. Still, they did just that earlier this year, with an all-electric take on their original Pony; now, they’ve turned the same trick on a Grandeur sedan as part of its 35th anniversary celebrations.

Look at the thing! Its exterior manages to blend old-school body lines with dandy new LED lighting signatures as if someone time-warped back to the ‘80s and dropped off this technology at the design studio doorstep. Spelling out one’s company name in billboard letters has become something of a popular retro throwback (witness the use of this styling technique at Toyota and Ford) but it just seems right on this Grandeur – especially on the trunk lid and full wheel covers (which are actually reported to be one-piece alloys). After all hands rushed to ditch their consonants and vowels in a bid to create a tidy fit-it-on-the-steering-wheel logo in the ‘90s (Mazda, Toyota, Hyundai, et al), it seems the trend is finally starting to reverse.

The cabin of this one-off Grandeur is a mesmerizing mix of old and new, with cues such as velvet and piano stripe styling playing right next to modern infotainment screens and displays. The original analog cluster has been predictably binned in favor of a jumbotron that surely shares much with what’s found in the upcoming Ioniq 5 EV hatchback. A neat trick is the concealment of a few audio speakers in the dashboard bluff, part of the 18-speaker system on board. And that in-roof lighting treatment over the rear seat is simply tremendous.

No, they’re not building this car – though there’s a case to be made that it could be something of a testing and display bed for tech and style that might come down the Hyundai pipe at some point in the future. After all, the dot-matrix lighting which appeared on the one-off Pony EV has since morphed into what will be produced on the rump of the Ioniq 5; your author has seen that machine in person and can confirm its pert rear looks just as good in real life as it does on a digital screen.

See? Told ya we know what you like.

[Images: Hyundai]