Before the official announcement of the high-performance N sub-brand in September 2015, Hyundai Motor embarked on a project in 2012 with the project code RM (Racing Midship).[ads id=”9″]
The RM 14, which was unveiled at the Busan Motor Show in 2014, was the first car to result from this project. As a high-performance sports car, it had a midship engine structure (engine mounted in the middle of the car instead of the front) to focus on the dynamic performance of the 2.0 Theta T-GDi engine with 300 hp. The sub-frame of RM 14 was a single structure to support the high-strength body frame, which is an essential part of a high-performance car.
The RM 15 that was displayed at the Seoul Motor Show in 2015 came with an aluminum frame and outer panels made of carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRP) to both reduce the body weight and further increase the panel strength.
As such, based on the high-performance technologies developed through RM 14 and RM 15, the Racing Midship 2016 or RM 16, another evolution of the RM series, debuted at the 2016 Busan Motor Show, using the embodiment of “low &wide” as cover letter.
Now, according to South Korean website Motorgraph which reports that Hyundai is currently developing its Theta-3 engine in order to be released late this year on the all-new generation 2019 Genesis G80. This new Theta-3 four-cylinder engines is beeing developed to fit on front-wheel drive, rear-wheel drive, and mid-engine cars, so this means that Hyundai could have in the future a production variant of RM16.
In order to get extra power, the displacement will grow from 2.0 and 2.4 liters of the Thera-2 to 2.5 liters and will be available with naturally aspirated and turbocharged versions, keeping GDi technology.
According to industry sources, FWD Turbo models will deliver 280 hp and RWD T-GDi models would get 300 hp. The current 2.0-liter T-GDi engine used in the Sonata whitin other models delivers 245 hp.
