SPY SHOTS: 2012/2013 Hyundai Veloster

It's been a long time coming, and its slow unveil has been even longer and more drawn out (and somewhat less hyped up) than the all new 2011/2012 Ford Explorer. And the more it's seen, the more details come out about it, and the more excitement this little hatchback-coupe creates. Hyundai just continues to rise and rise to the occasion, picking off its competitors chunk by chunk, and playing one big game of "Anything you can do, I can do better" with every model they make.





Take, for example, the Hyundai Equus. The whole point of this new luxury ride is to snipe off buyers of the Lexus LS460 and other big luxury sedans. So they go and take their checklist of what their competitor does right, they do it all even better, and then undercut their competitor in price. The Hyundai Genesis does the same thing to the BMW 5-series, and the Hyundai Genesis Coupe does it to everything from the BMW 3-series coupe to the Ford Mustang. Hyundai simply never rests.

So the new Veloster will take a stab at the Volkswagen Scirocco and various MINI Cooper iterations, as well as the new Honda CR-Z. And while the concept was a 3-door hatchback coupe, spy shots have all but revealed this pocket-sized hot hatch to actually be a 4-door hatchback - 2 doors on the passenger side, 1 door on the driver's side, plus the hatch. Looking like a flattened Kia Soul, the Veloster is trying to knock off multiple sport-compacts at once.

If you still don't believe the part about having a back-seat door on the passenger side, look at the pictures above, and look at the length of the passenger door vs the driver's side door. The driver's side door is too long to have an extra suicide door, but the passenger's side door is much shorter, and can easily fit a suicide door for rear access a la the MINI Clubman or Saturn coupes of old.

The base model of the Hyundai Veloster will come with a 1.6 liter direct-injected 4 good for an estimated 140 horsepower, and Hyundai claims that it will be good for over 40 MPG, which would, despite this car not being a hybrid, beat the Honda CR-Z hybrid. Will hotted up versions with turbocharged engines come out? Possibly, in which case expect incredible power and incredible fuel economy all from the same vehicle.

Will this car be roomy and spaceous? Look at it - it will not. It's not about roomy and spaceous - Hyundai has other cars in the portfolio for that. No. Hyundai sees the Veloster as a modern-day Honda CR-X - we see it as a hatch that is trying to compete against both the Volkswagen Scirocco and the MINI Cooper Clubman, as well as the Honda Civic coupe. Will it succeed? If the numbers are true and the hype turns out to be, absolutely - it will be one of the top new sport compacts and tuner cars of the decade.

Will YOU consider buying a Hyundai Veloster when it comes out! Let us know!



(SOURCE: http://carscoop.blogspot.com and http://www.insideline.com)