Think Hyundai, think chess. That’s the all-new design message being delivered by the carmaker’s style guru, Luc Donckerwolke.
Donckerwolke is reinventing the shape, look and feel of an expanding range of cars and SUVs and says that also meant some fresh thinking on linking the models into a cohesive family unit.
Thus he has moved Hyundai away from traditional design paths like the 'Russian doll' system of some makers (where each vehicle is a bigger or smaller version of the same shape) or the “sliced-sausage” approach at BMW, where the 3, 5 and 7 are sometimes described different slices from the same piece of meat.
“Previously we had a family look. We obviously want customers to recognise the brand,” Donckerwolke told carsales this week at Hyundai’s technical centre at Namyang in Korea.
“But this is not the message. We want to move from the family look to the Hyundai look. From now on, Hyundai design will have a spectrum.
“We will be much more extravagant, more expansive. In all segments.
“It’s like a chess set. The pieces all look different, they are function differently, but together they function as a team.”
Donckerwolke says the new approach, which also ties together 16 design studios and more than 1000 design staff around the world, has already begun with the all-new Sonata that arrives in Australia in the second half of the year. The next piece of the chess set is the Venue, Hyundai’s sub-Kona sized SUV, which is being revealed at the New York auto show next month.
“What is the key car for Hyundai? Sonata,” Lee SangYup, senior vice-president and head of the Hyundai Global Design Centre at Namyang, stated.
“If you can make the Sonata as the key car this is meaningful and special. This car is going to pop.”
For Donckerwolke, getting the Sonata right was a tougher challenge than just doing another big-box SUV.
“As sedans are losing speed, we need to give more emotion. We have to have more emotion or the decline will be even faster. To have a four-door with a sporty design is the most difficult task.
“Every designer can do a good SUV. There is no challenge,” Donckerwolke said.
Diving deeper into the design language at Hyundai, Donckerwolke talks about lines and shapes but focusses on the importance of lights - front and rear.
“We want light to be a key signature in design. At Hyundai we’re going to play a lot with the lamps, front and rear. We want to create some special value.”
Perhaps surprisingly, he is also a fan of old-school chrome on cars. That’s not just the usual splash on the grille, but also trim pieces that highlight the shape of Hyundai models.
“It becomes like light. This is the game we are playing,” he says.
But there are problems with chrome, as Hyundai ran into a safety drama with a metal strip that runs down the front of the Sonata alongside the bonnet. It was originally considered to be a pedestrian-crash hazard. Now, even though it looks strange, there is a break-point midway down the strip to ensure it does not become a sword-like threat.
“We even considered a tiny laser that would cut it in a crash, but that was not practical,” says Donckerwolke.