We saw a new electric off-roader from Jeep just the other day, but could a Hyundai be on its way to nip at the Recon’s mudguards? The Korean carmaker has revealed its new Crater concept at the Los Angeles motor show, a car that apparently answers the question “What does freedom look like?”
That was the brief for the study says Hyundai, which has come up with a chunky go-anywhere off-roader that’s ready for any adventure you can throw at its chunky 33in tyres on 18in alloys. The design takes some familiar themes from Hyundai’s current line-up and throws in some fun details that we’d love to see make it through to a real production Hyundai.
Some of our favourite features from the Crater concept include removable wing mirrors that double as both cameras and torches, a BYOD or “bring your own device” approach to the infotainment that has the driver plugging in their own phone to the dashboard very much like an entry level Dacia, and a rescue hook that doubles as a bottle opener while you wait for someone with a bit of rope to come and save you.
The Crater has certainly been designed with some extreme off-road adventures in mind – it has a full length skid plate underneath the car to protect it from the rough terrain you’ll be scaling, a roof platform with integrated lighting that you can attach various accessories to, and even cables that run up the length of the sides of the windscreen to protect the glass from low hanging branches.
There’s no mention of what might be powering the Crater’s adventures into the unknown, but we can probably assume it’s something electric, perhaps the all-wheel drive powertrain that sits in the Ioniq 5 that we’re quite fond of – you can read about that here along with some other electric 4x4s that unlike the Crater you can actually buy right now.
There aren’t actually any plans to put the Crater into production, insists Hyundai, but the concept does take inspiration from the company’s XRT trim in the US that beefs up its SUVs with some chunky body trim. We’d love to see a car like the Crater make production, but we can’t promise to take it anywhere more exciting than Aldi.
Could we see some of the Crater's fun little touches appear in a production Hyundai? Fingers crossed 
