Hyundai asks Giugiaro to recreate iconic Pony Coupe concept

SEOUL, South Korea – Hyundai Motor has commissioned the Italian design legend Giorgetto Giugiaro to rebuild the Pony Coupe concept from 1974, which the company still considers to be the roots of its design DNA.

The Korean automaker had hired Giugiaro’s company at the time, Italdesign, to design and develop the Pony compact hatchback, which would become Hyundai’s first independent model and South Korea’s first mass-produced car.

The Pony Coupe concept was revealed at the Turin auto show in 1974, and the Pony hatchback went into production in 1975. 

A production version of the wedge-shaped coupe concept was also planned for Europe and North America, but the project was abandoned in 1979 after Hyundai had already spent $80 million on tooling. Over the years, however, the original concept as well as development prototypes were lost.

Nonetheless, the Pony Coupe concept remained hugely influential for Hyundai, Hyundai Motor Group chief creative officer Luc Donckerwolke said on Wednesday at an event in Seoul.

"The Pony Coupe concept has already inspired the Ioniq 5 and the N Vision 74 (hydrogen concept), as well as other new models to come,” he said.

Given the original concept’s importance for Hyundai’s past and future, the automaker commissioned Giugiaro’s new company, GFG Style, to recreate the Pony Coupe.

The new Pony Coupe, which will be built in Turin and will be unveiled next spring, will be exactly like the original concept, including its underpinnings, which come from a first-generation Pony hatchback shipped from South Korea.

"We have commissioned Giugiaro to rebuild (the Pony Coupe) because it fits our design philosophy, ‘Shaping the future with legacy,’” SangYup Lee, senior vice president in charge of design for the Hyundai and Genesis brands, said in a news release.

The original Pony Coupe came about after Giugiaro was visited in Turin in 1973 by Hyundai founding chairman Ju-Yong Chung, who invited him to go to Korea to better understand his plans to become an independent automaker.

"I was unimpressed in seeing an outdated plant building old models from Hillman (the now-shuttered UK automaker), so Chairman Chung took me to Ulsan to see the Hyundai shipyard that was building a 250,000-ton oil carrier,” Giugiaro said this week.

Impressed with what Hyundai had accomplished in just three and a half years as a shipbuilder, Giugiaro accepted the task of developing the Pony family of models.

"When I see what South Korea is today, and where Hyundai stands in the global automaker ranking, I am really proud to have helped them to develop their own models,” Giugiaro said.

In addition to the first-generation Pony, built from 1975 to 1986 with a production run of about 685,800 units, Giugiaro designed four other production models for Hyundai: the Stellar midsize sedan, launched in 1983 and considered South Korea’s first premium model; the Excel compact hatchback and Presto sedan, used by Hyundai to successfully enter the U.S. market; and the Sonata large sedan (1988).