Hyundai to Out-Sexy Alfa

2018 has been a weird year, right? Every day we slip deeper and deeper into some funhouse mirror universe that defies logic and common sense.

Case in point: Hyundai chief designer, SangYup Lee, recently told Automotive News that, in a step away from their current grey-on-grey style, will introduce some Italian swagger.

“For Hyundai to be sexier than Alfa Romeo, this is the mission we want to achieve,” Lee says, clearly telling the truth as he wasn’t struck by lightning for his blasphemy.

He continues, opining on the endangered sedan: “The sedan is not going to die. That means you’ve got to do more on the sedan than conventional three-box with a boring look.”

He assures Automotive News that this isn’t at the cost of Hyundai’s reputation as being good value. Instead, he wants to take that newfound reputation for reliability and couple it with sleek styling that sticks out from the pack of volume cars.

Hyundai actually took a step forward in their styling with their previous generation of cars. The sixth-gen Sonata introduced a rather bold design that leaned heavily on folded metal, taking BMW’s flame-touched resurfacing and pushing it to the extreme. This carried through, to a lesser degree, in the rest of the line-up, before the seventh-generation of cars resorted back to a more conventional design, best summed up as a, uh, “…conventional three-box with a boring design.”

We here at Dropped Clutch say bring it on. Alfa Romeos are hands-down the most gorgeous mainstream cars available. They manage to bring so much sexiness that people continually buy them, despite they’re less than stellar reputations.

Imagine, then, a boringly reliable Hyundai that makes an Alfa look like a limp-dick in need of Viagra? One that’s inappropriate in school zones due to its sultriness?

We’re skeptical, but we are intrigued.