From brave chest to wild sedan
You undoubtedly remember the Hyundai Accent, a not exactly pronounced compact model that was also sold in the Netherlands over two generations. For decades, the Excel was a model that never pushed the boundaries of the conventional with its appearance, but that is completely different with the new one.
Model name Accent undoubtedly rings a bell with you. The Accent past is quite complicated. From the late 1980s to the mid-1990s, Hyundai supplied a sedan version of the Pony with the model name Excel in the Netherlands, among others. From 1994 Hyundai model name Accent officially pasted the name Accent on its Pony successor, but because Peugeot already used ‘Accent’ for versions of the Peugeot 106 and 205, that first generation Accent was also known as Excel in the Netherlands, among others. That Excel – available as a three- and five-door liftback and as a four-door sedan – was replaced in 1999 by a new generation and it was that car that was also called Accent in the Netherlands.
The first Hyundai Excel was the sedan version of the Pony.
The Dutch market was provided with a new (and therefore third) generation Accent in 2005, but after 2009 the Accent fun was over. In that year, Hyundai introduced the i20, which was specially developed for the European market, as an Accent successor, but the Accent still exists elsewhere in the world. The model has now been working on its fifth generation since 2017. In Russia as Solaris and in India and China as Verna. With the exception of the Chinese version of the current Verna, every generation of Accent looked mainly neat and little controversial, but with the new Hyundai Accent everything will be different.
The first generation Accent was known as Excel in various European markets.
The Indian branch of Hyundai releases the first design sketches of the completely new Verna. That Verna is called Accent outside India and China. Hyundai is clearly taking the plunge with the design of the new Accent/Verna. The new four-door sedan gets a strikingly contoured body, complete with right angles, wild creases and extravagant front lighting as you may already know from cars such as the Hyundai Sonata, Grandeur and Staria. Quite a revolution in Accent land. In any case, the new Accent will be launched in India with a blown 1.6 GDi petrol engine that can be linked to a six-speed manual gearbox and a seven-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission. A turboless 1.5 will also be available.
From this second generation Accent, the model was also called that in the Netherlands.
Is this of any use to the Dutch market? No. The new Accent is of course not coming to the Netherlands either. However, it may be interesting for the enthusiast of cars in a broad sense to see how even a relatively ‘well-behaved’ model like the Accent suddenly becomes a cheeky boy.
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– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl