TG's best retro electric car: the Hyundai Grandeur

What is it?

An official, in-house retro EV reinvention of something curious from Hyundai’s back catalogue. Based on an original Grandeur, an Eighties saloon that was essentially a Mitsubishi Debonair in costume, the Heritage Series Grandeur is a bizarre but brilliant exercise that proves you can, in fact, polish a turd. Logic has been flung wantonly out the window and it’s hard not to be dragged along for the ride. Not least because the end result ends up feeling like a mash-up between an ‘80s club night and a Grand Theft Auto gang car, with a side order of used-car-lot Cadillac. An odd recipe but one which results in sheer retro perfection.

Give me some details about the Hyundai Grandeur.

Keeping the old Grandeur’s wedgy shape but replacing all its lights with LED oblongs is inspired. And the boxy simplicity of a bygone era appears a decent place to host some modern minimalism, the Heritage saloon’s screens looking surprisingly at home in such a retrotastic car. Those flush window switches and naked stereo speakers are especially natty. Surprise, surprise there are no powertrain details – it has some batteries, and some motors – but do you really care? Course you don’t, you’re too busy fantasising about a Squid Games spin off show where the front man drives around in one of these.  

Why should I care about the Hyundai Grandeur?

Because in our electric future design shall be the differentiator, and in the words of the commentator from iconic Nineties video game NBA Jam: “Hyundai’s on fire!” Almost everything its design department touches at the moment turns to gold, be that unnecessarily attractive midsize crossovers, electric hatchbacks sent back from the future to save our dour streets or extremely boxy, faux-luxe four doors from the early- to mid-Noughties. Wait, what? Yep tired of constantly smashing it out the park, Hyundai clearly fancied a challenge, because from the least glamorous corner of its back catalogue Hyundai’s dragged the Grandeur, and turned it into the coolest one-off concept we’ve seen all year. From the dot-matrix lights to digitised velour interior, this is the retro homage we didn’t see coming but never want to leave.

Why did you give the Hyundai Grandeur an award?

Because everyone that works at Top Gear is specifically trained to appreciate the nuances and markers of truly great design. We don’t just look at a concept car like this and say “that’s ridiculously cool, I want one immediately". No. We take a highly scientific analytical approach that, in this case, revealed the Grandeur to be precisely 8.76% cooler than any other restomod, continuation car or retro homage we’ve come across in the last year. Also, it’s ridiculously cool and we want one immediately… which is a bit of a problem as Hyundai has no intention of ever making more than one. Hyundai, it’s never too late for a U-turn.

For the full story pick up the Electric Awards issue of Top Gear magazine