Prior to its official introduction at the Frankfurt Motor Show next month, Hyundai teased the rear of their new electric vehicle concept, complete with a nice big band of animated dot-matrix taillight goodness. The car is called 『45』 and it seems like those two bracket things are part of the concept car’s official name.


The name 『45』likely comes from the fact that Hyundai’s first independently-designed car, (it was building Cortinas under license before that) the Hyundai Pony, came out in 1975, which will be 45 years ago next year.

Oh, and it seems that 『these things』are known as

“hajime nijū kagiyamakakko ( 始 め 二 重 鉤 括弧 ) or just nijū kagiyamakakko ( 二 重 鉤 括弧 ), one of several types of “ parentheses “ used in Japanese texts. It is most commonly to highlight terms, phrases or quotations in texts. It is widely used in news headlines, stories, etc., from magazines, newspapers, etc. It can also be used to demonstrate a quote within a quote (「...『 ... 』...」).”


... just in case you were wondering.

Hyundai sort of confirms my 45=45 years theory as they say in their press release,

“Inspired by looking back at the brand’s first model in the 1970s, the 『45』 fully-electric concept car will act as a symbolic milestone for Hyundai’s future EV design.”

Even in this limited view you can see the design influence they’re talking about; the look of the car seems to be a sort of ‘70s fastback design, with crisp, straight lines:


It’s not a bad look to reference at all, and with the sort of the future-like-we-imagined-in-the-’80s matrix taillight setup, I think it works very well.

Hyundai’s press release of course explains the design in the most inane PR-talk possible:

The new concept accentuates the forward-driven design direction while exploring the evolution of Hyundai’s ‘Sensuous Sportiness’ design language. ‘Sensuous’ stands for enhanced emotional values that customers can experience through design, and ‘Sportiness’ is determined to implement those values through innovative mobility solutions.


That paragraph could be applied to absolutely any concept car made in the past few centuries and would be equally meaningless for any and all of them.

PR-frippery aside, I like what I’m seeing of this design direction, and I’m eager to see the entire car. It looks, you know, so sensuous and sporty, and the direction of that design is so forward, right?

