The Wildest Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis Concept Cars Ever

These one-off designs showcase how far the Koreans have pushed the bounds of their automotive imagination.

Untethered from the pesky realities of production constraints, federal regulations, and manufacturing costs, concept cars have long been a proving ground for designers and a glimpse into an automaker’s future product plans.

Once commonly associated with humble economy cars, in recent years Hyundai Motor Group has unexpectedly become a vanguard of forward-thinking automotive style. Models like the Kia Telluride, Hyundai Ioniq 5, and Genesis GV60 Magma have already made it clear that the brands under the Korean auto conglomerate’s umbrella aren’t content to blend into the scenery. But even those striking designs seem tame when compared to the group’s most ambitious concepts. Here’s a look at the coolest one-offs from the three automakers.

Kia Concepts

GT4 Stinger

Introduced at the 2014 Detroit auto show, the GT4 Stinger concept’s muscular bodywork was penned by Kia's California design studio and was considered “a throwback to the days when driving a car was a visceral experience,” Kia’s U.S. chief designer Tom Kearns said at the time. We never got a proper Subaru BRZ competitor out of the Stinger, but the coupe concept did point the way toward the midsize, rear-wheel-drive sport sedan that went into production a few years later.

HabaNiro

When Kia’s butterfly-doored, all-wheel-drive EV concept made its debut at the 2019 New York auto show, the automaker dubbed it an ECEV, or "The Everything Car EV." As such, the HabaNiro showcased a wide range of future tech, like a full-width virtual dash display with gesture control as well as a “Real-time Emotion Adaptive System” that was said to use bio-signal recognition technology to determine a driver's mood and adjust the cabin environment accordingly.

While the tech provided some sci-fi appeal, it’s the bold exterior details that really gave the HabaNiro its charm—some of which made it into the production version of the second-generation Niro, albeit in a more subdued form.

Vision Meta Turismo

Revealed in late 2025, the Vision Meta Turismo has no ties to Facebook’s parent company nor any to the Vision Gran Turismo cars from Sony’s Gran Turismo racing games, but it does sport some pretty intriguing features. Taking a form that’s part sport sedan and part minivan, the concept’s exterior design blends fluid surfaces with sharp character lines, and it’s outfitted with a pair of fins that jut out from the front fenders that house both the headlights and the side mirrors. The windshield also extends past the front doors, creating a canopylike visual effect.

The cabin is similarly adventurous and features a blocky yoke-style steering wheel as well as a joystick-like controller that sprouts out of the driver’s armrest. And rather than being outfitted with a traditional digital gauge cluster and a large infotainment screen like most of today’s production cars, the Vision Meta Turismo instead uses an augmented reality head-up display to provide navigation instructions, charge levels, and other real-time information on the windshield.

PV5 WKNDR

Kia first teased the PV5 in early 2024 as a rival to the Volkswagen ID Buzz electric van, a vehicle Kia also billed as having potential for commercial fleet use. Later that same year, the automaker upped the ante for enthusiasts by revealing an overlanding concept variant no one saw coming.

Riding on a lifted suspension and chunky all-terrain tires, the PV5 WKNDR sports an integrated winch, fender flares, and major Delica vibes. Although it’s unlikely that Kia will ever put the WKNDR into production, it does hint at the potential versatility of the PV5 and the rest of the PV series, which could make their way stateside in a few years’ time.

Genesis Concepts

X Gran Convertible

At the Seoul auto show this past spring, Genesis revealed a pair of stunning two-door concepts based off of the G90 sedan: the X Gran Coupe and X Gran Convertible. Sporting a hunkered-down stance and simpler, more muscular bodywork than today’s Genesis G90 production car, the convertible’s quilted leather upholstery and polished switchgear give the interior a Bentleylike aesthetic.

Although Genesis didn’t provide much technical detail about the concepts and hasn’t explicitly stated that they’ve been green-lit, they don’t look far off from production ready. Will these sleek two-doors help round out the model portfolio for the new performance-focused Magma subbrand? We’ll have to wait and see.

X Gran Berlinetta

Unveiled as an entry in the Vision Gran Turismo design series for Polyphony Digital’s Gran Turismo 7 racing simulator back in late 2023, the Berlinetta doesn’t seem as close to becoming a reality as the X Gran concepts above, but it certainly does look rad.

Curvaceous bodywork with minimal overhangs and a "cab backwards" design that maximizes the area in front of the passenger compartment give the Berlinetta exaggerated proportions that pay homage to the exotic front-engine GTs of the 1960s. They also allow for its hypothetical 870-hp V-6 to be mounted behind the front axle, making this a front-midship design. A hybrid system adds another 201 horsepower to the mix, bringing the output grand total to a lofty 1,071 hp and 986 lb-ft of torque.

Magma GT

As improbable as it may sound, Genesis says this Ferrari-rivaling mid-engine sports car will indeed go into production. The company plans to utilize an aluminum monocoque chassis, and power will be provided by a turbocharged 3.2-liter V-8 that’s derived from the engine that will motivate the Genesis GMR-001 hypercar in the upcoming World Endurance Championship season. A dual-clutch transmission is expected to handle the gear changes.

The Magma GT is likely to arrive in 2028 or 2029 and will be homologated for GT3-class racing, but it won’t look identical to the concept shown here. The final design will likely be even wilder, as Genesis president and chief creative officer Luc Donckerwolke told the press at the car’s unveiling in Le Castellet, France, this past fall that he wants the production car to be “more polarizing.” Luc, you have our attention.

Wingback

If Donckerwolke hasn’t already won you over with the prospect of a mid-engine supercar that’s even more extreme than its design study counterpart, perhaps his rationale for Wingback concept will do the trick: Simply put, he wants to build something to rival the Audi RS6 Avant and BMW M5 Touring.

High-performance wagons have always been niche products, especially here in the U.S., but the success that Audi and BMW have recently seen with their hot-rodded longroofs seems to indicate there’s a market worth exploring. Like the X Gran Convertible and X Gran Coupe, the Wingback is built on the existing G90 sedan’s platform, which makes a future production version of the low-slung five-door highly plausible.

Hyundai Concepts

Pony

More of an art piece than a proper concept car, in 2021 Hyundai decided to produce a retro-futuristic homage to the 1974 Hyundai Pony concept car that was penned by legendary Italian designer Giorgetto Giugiaro early in his career.

The project was led by Hyundai’s interior chief designer Hak Soo Ha and created for the automaker’s Heritage Series as part of a larger exhibition showcased at Hyundai Motor Studio Busan in South Korea. To create the restomodded EV, the team meticulously disassembled an actual first-generation Pony hatchback and incorporated a slew of updated tech into the rebuild. The revamped three-door blends its original boxy 1980s styling with modern touches like the pixel-style LED headlights, the latter of which hinted at the design of the units used in the production version of the Ioniq 5.

Crater

In recent years Hyundai’s XRT trim has evolved from a largely cosmetic treatment with soft-roading expectations to a more earnestly trail-ready enterprise, and with the debut of the burly Crater concept this past fall, it looks like the automaker is ready to take things several steps further.

Sporting a beefy look that wouldn’t seem out of place alongside a Jeep Wrangler Rubicon or Ford Bronco Raptor, the Crater is about the same length as the Ioniq 5 hatchback, but its lifted suspension, 35-inch all-terrain tires, and Hyundai’s newly minted “Art of Steel” design language give the rig some serious visual presence. The cabin eschews a large central touchscreen and other distracting gewgaws in favor of four small, detachable readouts for vehicle settings, while the presence of gearlike toggle switches and other analog controls could hint at the future direction of Hyundai’s interior designs.

Grandeur

Also created as part of the Heritage Series exhibition back in 2021, this restomodded compact sedan pays homage to the front-wheel-drive, Mitsubishi Debonair–related four-door Hyundai produced for the domestic luxury market in South Korea during the late 1980s and early ’90s. Although the Grandeur isn’t well known outside of its home country, the car was a milestone for Hyundai, representing its first foray into the luxury segment.

Like the Pony EV, it too showcases the Parametric Pixel exterior lighting that appears on the Hyundai Ioniq 5 production car, and that aesthetic theme continues into the cabin, which tastefully incorporates modern tech with old-school luxury touches.

N Vision 74

Arguably the coolest concept car that’s been introduced in the past decade or more, the N Vision 74 made its debut alongside the Ioniq 6 N-like RN22e concept at Hyundai’s N Day event in Busan, South Korea, back in the summer of 2022.

Unveiled as a 670-horsepower EV inspired by the 1974 Pony Coupe concept and fed by both batteries and a hydrogen fuel cell system, the N Vision 74 concept masterfully blends the box flares and aggressive aero of 1980s DTM race cars with a bit of DeLorean DMC 12 (another Giugiaro design) and plenty of retro-futuristic details.

Like most folks with functional eyeballs, we were immediately enamored and openly pleaded with the automaker to put the fully functional and drivable concept into production. According to the latest rumors, Hyundai is planning to make that happen in the not-too-distant future, although there’s no word on whether it’ll retain the concept’s hydrogen fuel cell setup, move to a more traditional EV design, or go in an entirely different direction with the powertrain. Hey Hyundai, we hear Genesis has a new V-8 on the way.