Hyundai USA has given British vehicle designer Khyzyl Saleem an open brief: take the Ioniq 5 N and imagine what it might look like if it had been born during rallying’s Group B era.
The 32-year-old Midlands-based designer, better known online as The Kyza, has spent more than a decade reshaping familiar cars through digital design. His most notable work is probably the modified Polestar 1 that appeared as the hero car in Need for Speed Heat. He has also brought several of his virtual bodykit ideas into the physical world.
For the Hyundai project, Saleem pushes the Ioniq 5 N towards the exaggerated proportions of 1980s rally machinery. Created entirely in Autodesk 3ds Max and rendered with Chaos Corona, the concept gains huge squared-off wheelarches, wide tyres, a deep front splitter, a heavily vented bonnet, and auxiliary spotlights. Flying buttresses rise around the rear quarters, while some renderings add an enormous rear wing and an equally substantial diffuser. A visible roll cage and competition-style details complete the impression of a genuine homologation special.
Saleem also created different treatments, including a darker, wingless version he jokingly describes as “Birmingham spec”. Finished almost entirely in black, it strips away some of the overt rally-car theatre and gives the oversized bodywork an unexpectedly clean appearance.
Mechanically, however, this is deliberately fantasy. Saleem says he likes to imagine replacing the Ioniq 5 N’s electric drivetrain with a screaming turbocharged inline-four from Hyundai’s WRC programme, and even suggests a rotary simply because it would be wonderfully impractical.
