The New York Auto Show floor isn’t even open yet, but most of it’s stuff we’ve already seen, or stuff we can take a guess at. Subaru’s new electric crossover will probably be its version of the new Toyota Highlander, Chrysler will definitely be showing off the new Pacifica, and Kia’s coming out with a new Seltos. There is one surprise, though. I don’t know what Hyundai is revealing. Nobody but Hyundai knows. However, the company did just release an extremely odd series of teaser images that don’t show a car at all, so let’s dig into them.
See, it’s normally tradition for an automaker to release something vague about a car before the reveal. A tight-cropped, underexposed image of a lighting signature, or a wide overhead shot, or something like that. Toyota teased the new RAV4 with aerial photography, Audi teased the previous-generation A8 with a photograph of it under a cover, that sort of thing. Hyundai, on the other hand, has teased a rock. That doesn’t sound particularly interesting, except for the way the rock is 1: ginormous, and 2: in the air.
Before we plunge into Pepe Silvia-levels of “what does it mean?” let’s calm down and think about a giant floating boulder rationally. Come to think of it, that’s probably a sentence never said or written before in the English language. Anyway, there’s one extremely obvious thing this could be.
Last year at the Los Angeles Auto Show, Hyundai revealed something called the Crater, a lifted rough-and-tumble electric crossover that just makes you want to say “hell yeah.” The promise of locking differentials, long-travel remote reservoir suspension, and stainless steel bash plates is pretty sweet. A few months later, I got to check out the Crater concept up-close and solo at a local press event, and the most amazing part of the whole project was how finished it felt. We’re talking real suspension, a real platform, seriously expensive metal components. Sure, the coach doors were a concept car flight of fancy and the dashboard seemed mostly for show, but I’d be surprised if Hyundai wasn’t considering some version of the Crater for mass production.
Consider the general environment: the off-roader segment is the strongest it’s been in years. The Ford Bronco and Jeep Wrangler are locked in a duel, Toyota will sell you a new 4Runner or a new Land Cruiser, Nissan’s bringing back the XTERRA, and Land Rover’s lineup is stronger than ever. You can even get a Lexus LX with factory-equipped all-terrain tires and a full brace of locking differentials. It’s a lucrative segment, and one that makes sense for Hyundai to play in.
While the Crater looks a lot like a Kona on HGH, it’s vastly larger than a subcompact crossover. Figure the footprint of an Ioniq 5 compact crossover, more than 11 inches of ground clearance, and fenders that are absolutely jacked, bro. However, the most curious part of the design is how it doesn’t seem decades off. The rear spoiler could hide a rear wiper, the rear bumper vents could be repurposed for reflector mounting, and there are even hidden headlights in the front bumper’s black trim.
Right now, you can get XRT trims of the Tucson, Ioniq 5, Santa Cruz, Santa Fe, and Palisade, which largely amount to knobbly tires, minor functional alterations, and a bunch of cosmetic upgrades. Perfectly competitive with the likes of Subaru’s Wilderness trim, but XRT could use a flagship just like how the Ioniq 5 N is a flagship for the N sub-brand. A production-spec Crater could do nicely.
Hang on, is that rock rotating? If you flip through the teaser photos, indeed it is. [Ed note: Here, I made you a GIF – Pete] Now, meteorites don’t normally hover, but there’s still good reason to believe we aren’t about to see some sort of flying car. The first is that a giant rock seemingly ready to make a crater is about as subtle as a sledgehammer. Rocks also generally fall, so that wouldn’t be great branding for a flying car. The second is that Hyundai’s Supernal eVTOL spin-off effectively went on hiatus in September. Even if the hiatus was over, resulting products likely wouldn’t be badged as Hyundais.
Of course, there’s also the possibility that Hyundai is getting ready to reveal a different kind of off-roader. Not only is the company readying range-extender hybrid powertrains for 2027, it also intends to build a midsize truck in America by 2030.
Still, if this teaser is as obvious as it looks, there’s a good chance we might be getting a proper off-roader from Hyundai. We’ll all just have to find out Wednesday at 9:55 a.m. EDT.
Top graphic images: Hyundai
1-too bad its so odd looking
2-too bad you cant see out of it. (kinda important off roading.)
Yeah….. no thanks. My former and current boss both own Hyundais and both just love to drink quarts of oil between gas fill ups.
Plop down an SUV with real off-road chops and it will definitely pull people onto the sales floor. Sure, it’s not a bronco, a wrangler, range rover or land cruiser, but it is likely to get some units moving and carve out its own niche in the sector. Hyundai is anything but a dumb competitor.
If they could bring something to the market that had the off-road chops of a Suzuki Jimny (or at least a touch larger) and keep the price reasonable, they will definitely move some units.
I don’t see something like a wrangler or bronco working out for Hyundai. Not so sure the higher end “adventure ready” market is doing so well or will be doing well because of market and economic pressures. But I guess if you figure Hyundai had an idea in 2021 or 2022 then wow they missed the boat. As has been the story all too often recently. Several generations of Sorrento are sort of a sleeper budget off roader but this sounds the opposite of that so ouch. It looks like the fj and that didn’t do great. But you would have thought it would have. Unless this thing is dirt cheap it’s a non starter.
What a delusional headline. The only thing this is fighting is the Hyundai truck, which is dead. I still am not sure it will win.
No one is cross shopping this with anything mentioned in the article.
I’m getting serious Zardoz vibes from that teaser photo. If you zoom in closer, is the guy standing there wearing thigh high leather boots and red bikini briefs?
Hyundai only wishes they could make something Zardoz levels of cool.
Is that a giant floating rock or the world’s largest toasted marshmallow? If it’s the latter, then I’m thinking enormous S’Mores. If the former, then that guy in the foreground appears to be between a rock and a hard place. Could be that’s a freeze frame of a meteor about to make a giant Crater.
IDK listened to an interview on the inevitable pod with one of Hyundai’s chief designers recently and I’m pretty sure he explicitly stated it would make no sense for them to directly chase Bronco sales, that’s a pretty conservative market and they have no real heritage there. That being said it does seem like (take this with a grain of salt since it’s someone who works at Hyundai) that they are taking real rough road capability seriously-of course also possible this dude was just sandbagging…
Have to admit I lol’ed at the suicide doors even though this concept is pretty cool, why do concept car designers love to include these they basically never make production.
Reading this entire list, and seeing Hyundai getting in there before General F’ing Motors is depressing beyond belief.
If only GM had a REALLY cool name for it, with years of brand awareness.
alas, they wasted it all on a crossover.
Whole heartedly agreed! I’ve owned and off-roaded several different GM products in my college days (s10 jimmy, 2 k-5 blazers, two-door Yukon) and still have a soft spot for GM trucks. Sad to see GM has pretty much abandoned a segment they arguably helped create.
Their hesitance to enter this particular arena does seem to be very odd to me…but I also think their entire business model basically depends on upselling as many customers to Silverados and Tahoes as possible. It’s why they offer such um…flexible financing on their trucks.
At the end of the day I really think it comes down to the fact that they’d rather convince a buyer to finance a $65,000 truck than offer a 4Runner, Wrangler, etc. competitor in the 40s/50s. “We don’t have that…but we DO have 17 Trail Boss Silverados on the lot and the finance guy already has a $999 a month payment ready for you!”
I’m sure there’s a lot of truth to that, but Ford had the exact same situation and built the Bronco anyways, to great success.
I believe it’s their second best selling truck behind the F Series
I think if it’s an EV their market will be a bit limited unless it’s truly revolutionary (see: Rivian R2), but I’d still be happy to see something this weird make it to market.
Hyundai seemingly has pretty good hybrid tech, the soft-road space seems like a really ripe target for it if done well, seems like lots of chance for battery regen when crawling down steep hills and better mpg equals better range which in my experience is always a legitimate bonus when exploring remote areas. Though I type this and realize that it doesn’t seem reviewers have been heaping the new Landcruiser hybrid with praise…
The first gen iForce Max stuff is a bit of a miss in their trucks. I think if it made them more powerful in real world applications or more efficient it would make sense, but Toyota of all people somehow found a way to do neither. In practice stuff like the Land Cruiser isn’t noticeably more efficient than the NA engines people would literally die for that preceded it and the extra power is totally nullified by the weight of the batteries…which also eat into cargo capacity to boot.
It’s very weird to see a company like Toyota miss as badly as they have. They know how to make trucks and they know how to make hybrids. To somehow give us a final product that isn’t really better in any way seems like a real oversight.
I imagine they’ll have the second gen versions of the powertrain in a better place…but even as a potential buyer in this class and someone who tried to be conscientious of their carbon footprint I really have a hard time justifying spending the extra money on a hybrid Toyota truck over just sucking up bad NA fuel economy in something like a Passport.
So if Hyundai has something that’s better on either the efficiency or power front they could swoop in and snag some market share. I think the people wanting more efficient options in this category are more common than manufacturers think. Look at how well the Wrangler 4Xe sold, and that thing was absolute shit….
I think the only way this works is if it comes out of the gate with an EREV with at least 80 miles of EV range. It makes running around town easy in EV mode and who is really road tripping a Bronco/Wrangler. But, if you want to go exploring in the wilderness, you’re set with the range extender. Of course, I’ve been waiting for this setup from Ford for a while, to no avail.
Would it really be The Autopian if we weren’t crossing our fingers for our highly specific requests?
(Said with affection, I love the idea)
Can’t possibly be a C8. Rebodied Tahoe or Blazer? 🙂
I bet the production car will be more of a Passport fighter than a Bronco/Wrangler fighter