Auto shows are all about the next. Automakers roll out their models for the new year and tease at their future with wild concept cars. At the International Motor Show in Frankfurt, kicking off next week, South Korea’s Hyundai Motor Co. is dipping into its short but storied past.
Hyundai Motor Group – that’s Hyundai Motor and Kia Motors – combine as the world’s fifth-largest automaker. This year, Hyundai, Kia and Genesis (Hyundai’s luxury brand) scored the top three spots in J.D. Power’s IQS report, as they did in 2018. The brands have several car of the year awards under their belts. This is remarkable, considering Hyundai has been making cars only since 1967 and its own cars since 1974.
And that’s where the story returns to Frankfurt next week.
In press photos, Hyundai has teased an EV concept it’s calling “45,” planned for Frankfurt. So far, the company has released pictures showing a wedge-shaped rear end that would look more at home at a 1970s motor show than one in 2019.
And that’s just the point.
Back in 1974, Italy’s premier motor show was held in Turin, home of Fiat. Understandably, the Turin show had a distinct home court advantage, and the hottest Italian brands often chose to unveil their supercars there. The 1974 Turin show saw eye-poppers from familiar marques: The Bravo, from Lamborghini; the Medici I concept from Maserati; the Cr25 from Ferrari; and…the Pony concept, from Hyundai.
The Pony concept sported the doorstop-wedge look of the time, a period when every designer seemed to think the car of the future would be driven by James Bond or a Bond villain and would have to run underwater as well as on land.
It had a loooong back and, aside from the wheel wells, sported no discernible curves, just angles and lines. It was not unhandsome, and one might even draw a dotted line from the Pony concept to the DeLorean without too many deviations.
Imagine the scene at Turin in 1974: Car stands displaying the finest body work of the best Italian designers from Pininfarina, Fiat, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Maserati, all flexing their sleek and shiny muscles, the culmination of seven decades of automotive engineering. And next to them, one car from a seven-year-old Korean car company, being shown by models wearing traditional Korean attire, called “hanboks.”
That was 45 years ago – hence, the “45” name for Hyundai’s Frankfurt EV concept.
When we brought foreign journalists to Hyundai Motor’s headquarters when I was heading the company’s global PR shop, we always pointed to the Pony with pride as our first own-built car. That was true, to a point. I liked to call it a United Nations of cars.
Starting in 1967, Hyundai began building its automotive expertise by assembling other cars. Ford Cortinas, to be precise, assembled at a factory in Ulsan. At Hyundai’s main R&D facility in Namyang, just south of Seoul, there is a car museum with a magical warehouse that holds almost every car made by Hyundai and Kia – and that includes some lovely old Cortinas.
By the early ‘70s, Hyundai felt it was ready to put its own name on cars. The company, under legendary founder Chung Ju-Yung (father of current Hyundai Motor Group Chairman Chung Mong-koo and grandfather of Executive Vice Chairman Chung Euisun), had the will, but lacked the expertise. So the company went shopping internationally.
For engineering and manufacturing know-how, Hyundai hired former British Leyland man Sir George Turnbull, from England. (Here’s a fabulous British news report on Turnbull from the time.) Turnbull used a Morris Marina as a base for Hyundai’s first car. Because Hyundai had yet to build its own powerplant, the company used an engine and transmission from Mitsubishi. And for the design, which would be the most critical component of the company’s first car, Hyundai hired Giorgetto Giugiaro, whose design hits ranged from the Maserati Ghibli to the Alfa Romeo 159 to the VW Golf Mk1.
Hyundai turned the Pony concept into the Pony production car, which would be the company’s identity for several years.
If you look at rear images of Giugiaro’s Pony concept compared to the teaser pictures of Hyundai’s 45 EV concept, the callback is clear. Hyundai is referencing its history to lay the foundation for its future.
This is part of the playbook for most other automakers, but it has not been the case for Hyundai. The Germans relentlessly trot out their history, and their invention of the internal combustion engine, and their Nurburgring, and their Ferdinands and Karls and Gottliebs. The Brits summoned the Swinging London glamor of their bygone automotive era with the rebooted Mini. Even Detroit hails its past, with varied success.
But South Korea has, until only recently, been a fast-follower nation rather than an innovator. As such, like many emerging nations, perhaps it was reluctant to tout its history. After all, only a generation before Hyundai began making cars, South Korea was poorer than all but the poorest African nations.
But now that is changing, and it’s pleasing to see. Hyundai – and Korea – should be proud of their up-from-nothing story. I often say that South Korea has compressed about 150 years of development into 50 years – something no other country has done. (You say “China,” but I reply, “Chinese cities.” Most of China is still a developing country. Not so in South Korea.)
When Hyundai decided to re-enter WRC racing, the prototype i20 car we showed at the 2013 Geneva International Motor Show was clad in black matte with raised black hangul letters – the Korean alphabet. Subtle, but present.
In 2017, Hyundai chose Seoul for the global launch of its 3-Series fighter Genesis G70 luxury sedan, with Genesis head Manfred Fitzgerald touting the Korean-ness of the brand’s new luxury car.
The 45 EV concept showing in Frankfurt next week is another sign that Hyundai is finally becoming comfortable showcasing its past. Another is the exceptional Hyundai brand film recently produced by Philippe Jourdain, Brand Strategy & ATL Team Leader at Hyundai Motor Europe, and Innocean Worldwide Europe, Hyundai’s advertising agency.
The product of years of discussion, planning, persuasion, management pushback and inaction, the film thankfully does not reflect its protracted labor and birth. It’s a smart, inventive film – impressive in scale and special effects and in the fact that it packs 60 years of history into two minutes. It starts with Hyundai’s most advanced vehicle, the Nexo hydrogen fuel cell SUV, and moves backyard in time to scenes of Koreans literally carving their future out of the living rock following the devastation of the Korea War.
Toward the end, the film zooms in on the face one young Korean man, heavily laden with rocks on his back, but with his eyes upward toward the future. He is not named, but it is clear this is Chung Ju-Yung, Hyundai’s founder, a man of such moxie and pharaonic vision that he signed the contract to build his first ship before he had a shipyard. He built the ship and shipyard simultaneously and delivered the vessel ahead of deadline.
And this is another important sign that Hyundai is growing more comfortable in its skin. Up until now, Hyundai’s founder – a true hero of modern Korean history – has been treated with such deserved reverence that he has essentially been sidelined in the company’s storytelling. The fact that Chung Ju-Yung is referenced – if not yet named – is encouraging. I’d love to see the company do more of this: his story is exceptional and inspiring, and as worthy as the stories of any Ferdinand, Karl or Gottlieb.
We know the future of automobiles is electric. In Frankfurt next week, Hyundai – which already has the much-praised Kona EV – will expand its vision of an EV future with a cheeky callback to its past.
