Haha, sure Hyundai, we believe you

In a world where every decision needs to make financial sense, Hyundai thought: “Fuck it, let’s lose money because we can.”

At least, that is what Hyundai’s new Performance Development Tech Unit head, and ex-Porsche engineer, Manfred Harrer told Drive.com.au happened when the engineers where tasked to come up with what’s now know as the Ioniq 6 N. According to the engineer they were essentially given the go ahead and ignore the potential sales figures of the project and just build the damned thing.

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And I can’t applaud Hyundai enough for doing this. It’s been so long since a big car brand green lit a project that is cool, fun and reflects well on a brand, just because they can take the financial hit.

This was more common place a few years ago. Every brand had skunk works and they came up with the best cars, which for the most part are still considered classics. My most favorite car is one that should never have been made: the BMW 1M. It’s a car made up of parts of other cars that should not work, but it does and it’s so amazing that prices for these things have been at least stable or are rising now.

Taking the 1M as an example of how things could turn out for the Ioniq 6 N: BMW made only 6.309 1M’s., while it only planned to build 2.700. Either number doesn’t sound like a lot, and definitely not like points at which profits would be made. But the kicker is that BMW claims to have made a decent amount on every car sold.

But I get what Hyundai is doing it. It’s very, very cool to say a sporty car was so special, even management couldn’t resist singing off on it, even if it didn’t make financial sense.

To Hyundai’s credit here, they are not trying to hide that last part. They are open about the fact the car is more a marketing machine than a car that will hit record sales numbers. But I’m guessing claiming that is also part of the marketing effort here. I mean, the thing looks so, so much better than the regular Ioniq 6 does, and it has the drive train of the critically acclaimed Ioniq 5 N.

For reference: according to Hyundai, the 5 N makes up about 5 percent of total Ioniq 5 sales. Worldwide more than 260.000 of those have been sold. That means around 13.000 5 N’s are on the road right now. While demand for the Ioniq 6 has been sliding (it’s old), it sill has sold more than 100.000 units up until now worldwide. So let’s say the potential for a good amount of 6 N’s to be sold is there.

In other news:

Max Verstappen has apparently met up with Toto Wolff in Sardinia to talk about taking over Mercedes F1 team and rebrand it Verstappen Racing. Other sources told the media that Wolff was begging Verstappen to join Mercedes for 2026. We still don’t know which of the two is true. But if it turns out to be the first (which I made up), I’ll be the first to sing “Max, Max, Max, Super Max in the Mercedes Grand Stands at the next F1 Grand Prix.

Goodwood Festival of Speed took place last weekend, and the winners are in: Romain Dumas took the title with the electric Ford Supertruck (which was also used to win Pikes Peak this year) with 43.23 seconds needed to complete the hill climb. It’s an impressive whine to watch. But it still liked Scott Speed’s (that name has to be the best) run in the Subaru way better. Anyway, enjoy all of the winners.

According to Bloomberg Elon Musk is calling in a vote to see if Tesla investors would like to see the car company invest into xAI, the artificial intelligence startup he founded. It’s not because xAI desperately needs cash to keep its billion dollar monthly burn rate going, but it’s to let Tesla-investors enjoy and participate in the increasing value of xAI.

To close things out: Ferrari chair John Elkann settled with the Italian tax agency over a court case about the inheritance of his grandmother. He and his siblings forgot to report who received which assets to the authorities and therefore forgot to pay tax over said assets. According to Reuters Elkann paid the tax agency ‘a significant amount’ to have them stop nagging about it.

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