Hyundai came close to developing a mid-engine supercar.

In 2017, Hyundai surprised almost everyone with the i30 N, a car that seemed to come out of nowhere and helped cement Hyundai’s place in the enthusiast scene. But we didn’t know it at the time, but the history of the N brand could have been a lot different and maybe even more interesting.

Albert Biermann, who was the former head of Hyundai N, told  that they had originally planned to build a mid-engined supercar instead of the i30 N hot hatch to launch the N brand in 2017. However, the plan was scrapped before the car had a chance to be built.

Biermann said that the now-canceled project was going to have a carbon-fiber tub chassis and different options for the powertrain. “We had plans for either a gasoline engine with or without a hybrid system, or a hydrogen fuel cell,” he said.

Taking a look at the recipe now, it looks like Hyundai had everything they needed to make the car a success. Biermann even said it could have been Hyundai’s answer to the Honda NSX: an all-wheel-drive hybrid supercar with a family car badge, but “not boring.”

The Hyundai N Vision 74 is the remake of the DeLorean we never got.

However, the company’s board of directors decided against it before the car even had an internal codename. It was always called “The Chairman’s Car.”

“The problem was that the car would have cost over USD150,000, which is about RM687k at the time,” Biermann said. “At the time, people thought a Hyundai couldn’t cost that much.” For comparison, the most expensive thing Hyundai had ever sold at the time was three times as much as that.

It wasn’t a secret that Hyundai wanted to make a mid-ship ship. The company has been experimenting with mid-engine concept cars for a long time, starting with the RM14 in 2014 and most recently with the RM20e, which will have an electric powertrain and come out in 2020. Even though they all look like the Veloster, their frames are very similar to those of the mid-engine supercar that was never made.

Now that Hyundai N has proven itself to be a serious contender in the performance vehicle market, it might be time for the Korean car company to think about making a supercar again. After all, the N Vision 74 is probably one of the most interesting concept cars we’ve seen in a long time, and the response on the internet seems to agree with us.