Now that Hyundai is flooding us with design highlights such as the Ioniq 5, it’s nice to look back at the period when the Koreans may not yet have mastered the visual connection to global tastes. We present: the second generation of the Lantra.
It is a bit bland, that intro text. Moreover, the undersigned thinks the Lantra that we are talking about here is not even such a bad-looking car. At the same time, everyone can see that Hyundai has also made great strides in design in the 27 years that separate us from the beginning of this model generation. The 1995 Lantra, which by the way was already called ‘Elantra’ outside Europe and Australia, was a typical product of the 1990s with its convex shapes. A striking feature was the lack of a grille between the headlights, although it was later added certain model variants still mounted a modest copy.
From 1998 all Lantras have a grille. The split copy is part of the facelift that we are talking about today. It was quite extensive. The entire front was overhauled, including the hood, front bumper and of course the headlights. They have a somewhat remarkable shape from 1998, thanks to a flashing light with a more modest height than the actual headlight. This is probably the result of the choice of the bookkeeper, who, despite all the news, wanted to keep the front screens – and therefore the cutout of the direction indicator. We also see this phenomenon at the rear of the sedan. Here too Hyundai installed new, somewhat ‘sagged’ light units, but the outer part kept its shape. The station wagon version was approached more modestly here. The ‘pack mule’ was allowed to keep its lines, but exchanged the orange/red/white rear lights for two-tone and differently classified copies.
For those who have now completely fallen in love with the pre-facelift Lantra, there is good news. An apparently neat copy is for sale on our site for an equally decent price. Take your chance!
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl