Hyundai Desperately Wants Street Cred

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Yes, this is a Hyundai Equus luxury sedan with manufacturer plates and a wing ripped straight off a B16 Civic. It's not a joke. Hyundai'll do anything for performance cred.

This photo was sent into AutoBlog and they've made a joke about Rhys Millen replacing his Pikes Peak-racing Genesis coupe with this luxobarge. Yeah, probably not, right? Wrong. It's obvious this is a production test unit because Hyundai wants to take over the automotive world. All of it.

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In addition to buying a million Super Bowl ads and a billion Oscar commercials the company has long sought out tuners for their vehicles including numerous SEMA, Genesis show cars.

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In fact, back in 2007 Hyundai execs apparently approached RENNtech's Hartmut Feyhl with an eye towards establishing an AMG-like relationship with the tuner (Feyhl was former AMG Tech Director). So even if this particular car+spoiler photo is just routine high-speed testing or a joke to play on Autoblog, there's nothing funny about the way Hyundai wants to buy its way into the forefront of everything automotive. And yes, that includes performance cars.