Maybe its owner got tired of not being able to find their Sonata in the parking lot. These cars do look rather generic. Posted at the Cohort by Triborough
Cohort Outtake: Purple Hyundai – How Else To Notice Such A Bland Car?
– Posted on March 17, 2014
With alloy wheels and sunroof it must be a fairly loaded model, are those leather seats I spy?
Of course when this Hyundai was built the company was just on the upswing. I’ll always remember the story about a meeting with Bob Lutz and the heads of vehicle assembly where he showed them a Hyundai off a dealers lot that had more consistent panel gaps than the cars GM was building. Supposedly one of the people he tried to lay blame at the feet of got purple in the face screaming at him.
Well if you’re going to spend the money to repaint an old Sonata, you may as well make it interesting I suppose.
Even as a Vikings fan I don’t love the purple, but it still looks a whole lot better than a white Sonata.
The colour matched seat covers are a nice touch. This car needs little chrome or black trim to break up that purple.
Purple is just one of those colors that screams “ECONOMY CAR” except when used on certain muscle cars (Challenger, anyone?) or custom cars. In those cases, purple hues are considered outrageous enough that they actually fit in on equally outrageous cars.
On a Sonata? I just hope the owner’s in it for the long haul, because good luck selling that car to anyone other than someone with a sub-500 credit score and an air of desperation about them.
Well – that depends on… IMHO, in Europe its styling would’ve been considered quite radical, on par with the 1995 Ford Scorpio, e.g. May be in some places more familiar with Asian brands these distinctly “Korean” canted headlights would look more generic ?
By the way, the same generation Sonata (but with different headlights and taillights) was built in Russia by TagAZ (a Russian/Korean/Chinese joint-venture) until the fall of 2011 – the Korean YF Sonata is badged as the Hyundai i40 here because of this. It was mostly a fleet vehicle, though. Taxicab companies liked them, surprisingly enough – most cabs were painted Burgundy Red. By now they are all but extinct, replaced mostly by IV-gen Ford Mondeo, which is sold at a bargain price with a 1.6 L engine.
By the way, the same generation Sonata (but with different headlights and taillights)
We got the “refresh” too. The different headlights made the overall design much more attractive.
This brought back memories…I wrote the showroom brochure for these cars (for all Hyundai models, actually) when they were new. Maybe the owner’s a big Prince fan.
Is it a respray the smaller Excel/Accent came in purple from the factory, this one certainly stands out.
Got to be a respray. IIRC that Excel/Accent came in a metallic dusty lavender.
You got me wondering too Bryce. I’m sure I’ve seen that colour on NZ-new Accents. Have also seen the dusty lavender colour and the two are quite different.
A “Rhapsody in Blue,” this Sonata is not.
A car like this reminds me of the only poetry I can recite from memory:
I never saw a purple cow
I never hope to see one
But I can tell you anyhow,
I’d rather see than be one.
The same sentiment applies with purple cars.
Particularly when the car is as ugly and boring (to put it mildly) as the Hyundai.
Milka is a renowned purple cow breeder.
hehehe
Let’s have some more wild coloured cars today.It would make a nice change from the silver,grey and white usually seen.
I don’t have a lot of pride. Always drove whatever got the job done. That said, I really don’t want to drive (or be seen in) this.
This reminds me (a lot) of the magenta color used on many of the first gen Neons.
Then there is the purple that Ford offered on the Escort in the 90s. Seems I recall seeing a Focus in this color too.
IIRC that ford color was called boison berry blue. A guy I knew in high school painted his 4cyl mustang that color. And another guy actually had and escourt in that color.
Purple is my favorite color. But a little goes a long way – you have to use it sparingly. There’s no way I’d own a purple car.
I could easily put up with a purple A,B or E bodied Mopar muscle car if anyone doesn’t really like it!
How about a pink Challenger?
Now that’s just plum crazy.
Or maybe Panther Pink…
My boss has a pink Challenger, but hers is a ’70 R/T SE with a 440, black vinyl roof and white interior.
hmmm… Is she married?
Yup–her husband also has a ’70 Challenger, in Limelight with the chartreuse bumble-bee stripe and black interior.
Sorry 🙂
Dang, back to Tinder then.
They must need industrial-grade sunglasses for their garage.
A pink 70 Coronet/Superbee(I’m one of the few 70 fans here) or Duster has been on my wish list since I first read about them
I haven’t run across a pink ’70 Coronet R/T or Super Bee Gem, but I did spot a pink 1970 Valiant Duster 340. It’s in this Car Show Classic post: https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/car-show-classic-the-rock-island-arsenal-is-celebrating-150-years-so-why-not-have-a-car-show/
And I will be writing up the pink ’70 Challenger later this spring or summer.
I had never heard the story about Bob Lutz and the Hyundai.
I would tend to believe it
i will say my 2009 Kia Rondo has WAY better build quality than my last 2001 GM .
‘Magic Happens’ Ltd Ed.
I guess he really, really wanted a Plymouth Prowler…
or
Having been arrested a hundred times in the past five years by Batman, the Joker was forced to downsize.
or
Years after Fred, the Mystery Machine and the rest of the gang left town, Daphne entered early middle age still clinging to the past…
While the occasional OEM offerings of cars in purple, pink, and unnatural green shades have always failed to sell even remotely well (usually ending up languishing on car lots, sometimes for years), the car companies still do it. I suspect it’s one of those deals where the simple outrageousness of the color of a prominently displayed car can sometimes lure people into the showroom for a sale of something.
But, at some point, that draw wears thin and the forlorn, funky-colored vehicle eventually ends up relegated to the back lot.
Recently shared the love on the Holden HQ metallic pink with VF Craig. This pic doesn’t show how fantastic this colour really is. And there were a few around in their time.
Whoa–that HQ is really cool! Dare I say, Broughamtastic?
Broughamtastic is the word. This is an LS model, the most luxurious spec for the Monaro, basically Premier-level, not Statesman-level.
I don’t know about that. I have a lime green Ford Fiesta. I see lots of lime green Fiesta’s out there. From what I gather from talking to a few folks in Ford, the lime green color is a very popular Fiesta color. Which in a way pisses me off since I bought the car in that color to be different but in retrospect I should have just bought white as i never see a Fiesta in that color.
A white Fiesta would lay an egg (or be one)
I read an article in I think Car and Driver years ago that talked about this. There was a fairly complex strategy to the whole thing, the object of which was not to sell a bunch of cars in those unusual colors, but to make the model more visible at certain points in its life cycle. A whole lot of research went into choosing the colors and they would in most cases deliberately be short-lived. Of course, those colors wouldn’t necessarily do good things for residuals, but that wasn’t the point.
I would also add that while car shopping with my sister in the late 80’s-early 90’s?, I remember we were at the local Hyundai dealer and in their showroom was a Accent that was a peculiar color of salmon that looked close to the color used by Chryco cars of the 60’s.,
This car is from that transitioning period that Kia/Hyundai went through. Like the Santa Fe this vehicle looks fish-like and like the Santa Fe it is not as dull looking nor blends in as well as some vehicles.
I would not say New Jersey’s license plates are ugly, but they do perplex me at times. What is the point of the pale yellow to white fade? What inspired New Jersey to use that style of font? Why did they stop issuing the Blue and Buff plates?
If you want to talk about questionable paint jobs, we need to include the “harlequin” Rabbit, which could be ordered from the factory like this. I actually saw one on the road.
Although it looks like hell, it’s otherwise quite a practical idea for minor collision repair, i.e., no difficult paint matching of panels.
i.e., no difficult paint matching of panels.
Yup. iirc, the VeeDub web site at the time said that the company used a computer to plan out the different colors so no two neighboring panels would be the same color.
These came out about the time I had a minor collision in my A2 GTI (someone hit me sideways at the extreme front end of the car), though the insurance totalled the car, I ended up gettting replacement panels from a salvage yard, and never painted them…the hood and fender were burgandy and I thought didn’t look too bad (other than the obvious mismatch paint) with the stock silver color of the car. Though I don’t think they had a Harlequin A2, I remember thinking I had a start towards having one…don’t remember what color the radiator core support was. I had no trouble selling the car a few years later (the ’86 was a pretty desirable model at the time) even with mismatched color of the obviously replacement body panels (but the accident was pretty minor, didn’t affect the AC condensor nor radiator).
Perhaps for a single panel, but it would be expensive to re-paint more than one. Depending on the extent of damage you’re looking at up to four different colors, with each panel being a multiple-step process. That would add up real fast and take a lot of time. It would be cheaper to repaint the entire car a new color, but then you need to do all the jams which also adds cost.
Someone who lives in my part of town had one of these until about 10 years ago. I’d never seen one before and assumed it was a custom job. Car sure was easy to spot!
Maybe its owner got tired of not being able to find their Sonata in the parking lot.
Could be; these are definitely on the anonymous side. But I find the Jack-in-the-Box antenna ball on my Camaro works just fine for parking-lot I.D. purposes; never felt the need for a garish respray just to be able to pick out my vehicle in Lot G-7.
This Hyundai is proof that jellybeans come in purple.
Hey, Im all for a wild and crazy color…IF the car is right and IF the color looks good. Plum Crazy on a Challenger…its not for me, but its cool. These goofy colors on econoboxes or blobby looking sedans is just an eyesore. This abomination is at my work. Yes, I share a place of employment with some poor sod who is this far gone when it comes to being ‘taste challenged’:
Obviously the poor sod is crossing the line with that color.
This is a shade of purple that was available on NZ Hyundais. The photo’s not the best (it’s from a trademe ad), so the colour looks like it’s darker than the Sonata.