SLIP STREAM

“THAT’S THE THING WITH STREAMLINED SHAPES: THEY LOOK GREAT BUT THEY’RE DIFFICULT TO EXECUTE”

We know what you’re thinking, has Hyundai’s design department just dropped the ball spectacularly for the first time in years? To put it kindly the new Ioniq 6 is, er, challenging, but you may need to do a bit of internet cross-referencing to fully assimilate what you’re looking at here, because this is a car that doesn’t shy away from its influences.

And what influences they are. Hyundai’s HG Wells-style time machine stopped off in the mid-Seventies for the rapturously received Ioniq 5, but this time we whirl further back to the Twenties and Thirties, a spectacularly creative time for automotive and transport design.

Back then, streamlining was all the rage, and the results were often fascinatingly barmy. Take the Stout Scarab, for example, designed by John Tjaarda (whose son Tom would later make a name for himself), an Art Deco and aviation-inspired masterpiece that also featured a unitary chassis and ingenious packaging. Or the one-off Phantom Corsair,