Hyundai Motor Company was spotted benchmarking the mid-engine Alpine A110S sports car. The place is Nurburgring, Germany. Overseas, there is a lot of speculation about whether Hyundai Motor Company will start sports cars in earnest.
YouTuber and Nürburgring driving instructor Misha Charoudin recently spotted an Alpine A110S sports car in a parking lot. From the license plate starting with GG HY, it was possible to know that the vehicle was used by Hyundai Motor Company.
Previously, Hyundai used similar license plates on cars such as the Honda Civic Type R and the Volkswagen T-Roc R. These vehicles were benchmarked competitive models when Hyundai Motor Company developed the i30 N, Veloster N, and Kona N performance models.
So why is Hyundai testing the Alpine A110S sports car without a two-seater sports car in its lineup?
Foreign media have made some speculations about this. First, Hyundai Motor Company could have found something applicable to the N model in the Alpine A110S. When thinking of Albert Biermann, a former BMW high-performance M department, Hyundai Motor Company is trying to implement the same driving feeling as the A110S in the N model’s high-performance crossover or hot hatch.
It was also predicted that Hyundai Motor Company, which is developing the Ioniq 5N electric car, may refer to the balanced method of the mid-engine sports car chassis of the A110S to maintain the body balance using a flat skateboard chassis.
Another possibility is that Hyundai is conducting pre-launch testing to develop a sports car in earnest. Previously, Hyundai Motor’s N Vision 74 hydrogen sports car concept raised expectations for Hyundai’s sports car.
Meanwhile, it has been a long time since Hyundai Motor Company mentioned plans for a supercar. In 2017, the concept of a sports car was abandoned due to the exorbitant production cost and the expected selling price of about 200 million won. Later, Hyundai Motor Company planned to make two sports cars with an electric vehicle and a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle by using the Rimac stake. However, the plans went awry when Porsche bought a controlling stake and established Bugatti-Rimac. This was in May of last year, before the N Vision 74 and RN22e concepts were unveiled. Previously, related industries have been making the expectation that Hyundai Motor Company will produce a sports car someday is a matter of time.
