Hyundai’s Vampire Fetish: Cold Start

It’s Halloween! The day we can finally dress like sexy cats and roam the streets without people judging us as we sexily slurp tuna from cans. You know what I mean, I’m sure. It’s also the best time of year to point out important scary things in not just automotive design, but taillight design. And I need to call out Hyundai, who has had a longstanding vampiric fetish with their taillights.

Yes, vampiric; as in of vampires. Specifically, fangs. Hyundai taillight designers seem to have a bit of a fang fetish. Bloody fangs, even. There’s at least three separate times, two of which I didn’t make up, that Hyundai has incorporated a bloody fang motif into their taillights.

Let’s start with the most recent iteration, found on the current-gen Tuscon:

Those are fangs. No question. Four sharp fangs, slathered in blood. They even have a sharp fang motif pattern on the lights themselves, so we have little fangs on big fangs. But these are even a bit more subtle than the fangs that came before them:

The third-gen Hyundai Elantra hatch had taillights that featured a really obvious bloody fang motif; just look at those inner reverse/tail lamp units that flank the license plate area. They have a fang shape, and, unlike the Tuscon fangs that are monochrome red, these incorporate the ivory of the tooth (the reverse lamp) itself with a lower blood red area that really suggests the look of a fang, freshly dipped in blood.

For taillights, these are incredibly fang-y.

Now, by far the most blatant example of Hyundai Fang-Fetishism has to be on the early Ponys:

Remember those? I think they were optional and kind of expensive, because they were made from hollowed-out endangered narwhal tusks, and had lights inside them along with hoses that took red ATF/hydraulic fluid from a special resovoir and dripped it out the tips of the tusks to give that perfect dripping-fang effect.

This was a surprisingly popular option, though pressure from animal rights groups about the wholesale capture and killing of narwhals and local municipalities tired of red ATF stains all over their roads soon forced Hyundai to pull the option.

If you can find an old Pony with these today, it’s worth picking up! They’re worth plenty!

Happy Halloween. Maybe I made that last one up.