2025 Los Angeles Auto Show: Hyundai Gets Weird With The Crater Concept
LOS ANGELES -- Hyundai has gotten weird at the 2025 Los Angeles Auto Show, thanks to the Hyundai Crater Concept.
In a nod to design exercises of yore, the Crater is meant more to show off what the company could do with its XRT trims than it is to preview a production vehicle.
“CRATER began with a question: ‘What does freedom look like?’ This vehicle stands as our answer,” said SangYup Lee, Executive Vice President and Head of Hyundai and Genesis Global Design. “It is a vision shaped by our unending drive to explore — to inspire our customers to explore deeper and embrace the impact of adventure.”
The 18-inch wheels host 33-inch rubber, and Hyundai says the inspiration for their shape is an asteroid hitting ground and creating a, well, crater.
Other details include a skid plate, a roof platform, auxiliary lighting, hood-to-roof cables to deflect branches, and suicide doors.
Inside, the concept is set up for customization in terms of wireless devices, the head-up display is full width and incorporates the rearview-mirror camera, there is ambient lighting, a roll cage, and a display in the center of the steering wheel.
See More Photos Of The Hyundai Crater Concept
The Crater looks like something out of a sci-fi movie set in the near future. I think it looks kind of cool and while a toned-down version would probably do well in production, I suspect no such vehicle will be built. Instead, look for various styling elements and functional features -- though probably not suicide doors -- in a XRT-badged Hyundai near you in the near future.
[Images: Hyundai]
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Tim Healey grew up around the auto-parts business and has always had a love for cars — his parents joke his first word was “‘Vette”. Despite this, he wanted to pursue a career in sports writing but he ended up falling semi-accidentally into the automotive-journalism industry, first at Consumer Guide Automotive and later at Web2Carz.com. He also worked as an industry analyst at Mintel Group and freelanced for About.com, CarFax, Vehix.com, High Gear Media, Torque News, FutureCar.com, Cars.com, among others, and of course Vertical Scope sites such as AutoGuide.com, Off-Road.com, and HybridCars.com. He’s an urbanite and as such, doesn’t need a daily driver, but if he had one, it would be compact, sporty, and have a manual transmission.
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A square steering (trapezoid?) for an "off-roader" that, in all probability, will be specified with rack and pinion steering? It will render fingers useless for all those buttons and touch screens after driving around rocks and roots for a few miles.
Experience a good downhill bump into an obstacle off-road, and you'll appreciate why real work and off-road trucks use recirculating ball steering and round steering wheels (that you seem to spin like a ship's wheel on pavement). Another light road SUV whose design committee is pulling in a few too many directions despite the narrative.
"Hyundai gets weird."
GETS weird?