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Hyundai is killing off the Elantra Coupe for 2015, after just two years on the market.
While no reason was given for the car’s demise, the coupe market is shrinking overall, and the Elantra’s chief competition includes one of its cousins, the Kia Forte Koup, as well as the Hyundai Veloster and the Hyundai Genesis Coupe. Outside of the Hyunda-Kia lineup, only the Honda Civic Coupe truly competes with the Elantra.
When we last drove the Elantra Coupe, we were more impressed with its hatchback variant, the Elantra GT. Apparently, we weren’t the only ones.
31 Comments on “Hyundai Axes The Elantra Coupe...”
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In other words: Everybody buy an Elantra Coupe or two and put them in storage! They’ll be rare/valuable in 20 years, as there will certainly be no others left on the road.
It’s like when they were looking for ANY 1st gen Taurus/Sable that was in show condition for the Glenmoor Gathering and they didn’t exist, they all got used up!
Don’t the cars have to be somewhat desirable to be valuable, though? I’m sure there aren’t a heck of a lot of 1997 Grand Am GT coupes left in great shape either.
Or Hyundai Scoupes.
What about the Kia Forte? I know with the complicated relationship between Hyundai and Kia that a Hyundai announcement is not necessarily a Kia announcement and vice versa.
The Forte coupe (Koup) just got redesigned for 2014 along with the rest of the lineup. New engine, interior, everything. They didn’t just recycle the previous model like Nissan did with the Altimas. I suspect it will stay in production since they’ve invested heavily into the redesign. For now…
I just sold my 2010 Forte Koup last week. Was a nice little car, but being free of car payments is nicer!
Kome on down to Kevin Kia and get yourself a Kia Koup.
Ha! I should have put that in my CL ad. Might have sold sooner! :)
I didn’t even know this car existed. Naturally, I’m heartbroken.
My sentiments, exactly!
Perhaps I’d have known about this car if I was a “Millenial who is engaged via twitter and instagram.” But I’m a disengaged middle-aged man.
I’ve never even seen one of these. I even play with the web sites of all the manufacturers to configure cars. It’s something to do while “watching” television.
And I still didn’t know it existed.
I bet the first time I see one will be on the Barrett-Jackson Mecum Auctionpalooza when I’m in a nursing home. Hopefully, it’ll be on TV before Lawrence Welk.
“Sporty” front-wheel drive low-priced things like this have always been really, really popular in Quebec. I’ve never seen one.
Plenty of Forte Koups though. Those take the prize for having the worst clutch / throttle combination I’ve ever used.
What year Kia Forte Koup? I had a 2011 sedan and I agree that the clutch and throttle were a nasty combination. With the clutch delay valve and the dead spot in the throttle it got all but intolerable to live with. This is why I eventually ditched it in favor of a Focus.
@tankinbeans Both a 2010 Forte Koup SX and 2010 Forte SX sedan with the higher horsepower engine and six speed manual. I had a hard time not squealing the tires on every launch. The throttle was crazy finnicky.
I think it was the same setup on the Elantra, but with the 2.0 instead of 2.4 engine.
These things fill the same niche as Cavalier, Grand Am and Civic coupes of old, which is what middle to upper middle class daddies buy their little girls who are going to lower than top tier private liberal arts colleges.
Never saw many underpowered new coupes around JHU but they were thick as flies half a mile up at Loyola.
I don’t believe I’ve ever seen one. I see the sedan version all the time, and I’d surely notice something so stumpy driving around.
However, the price of this thing (according to what I just researched) is too close to the the Altima Coupe.
I’ve never seen one EVER in the wild. Not even as a rental.
There is no reason for it to exist, it’s just a less practical Elantra.
Dang it, Danio. I was ready to comment with this:
There was an Elantra Coupe?
if it only had the Tri Shield tune , it would have sold like wildfire, sniff sniff.
A 2.0T might have kept it fresh as the reviews were positive. Just could use more power and instantly jump to head of class on some people’s radar.
Just the US market or globally?
Did they even sell it outside the US in the first place?
You can configure one online and have it sent to your local dealership in Korea and I’ve seen them around in the Philippines.
I don’t think I’ve seen one on the road, but it’s not the kind of car that would catch my eye.
While looking for a cheap fun car I saw that the Forte Koup had an available turbo, same setup as the Veloster as far as I can tell. So I checked the Elantra Coupe and nothing. So off the list it went.
For the price, I’m sure it’s a decent value. There’s one near me listed new for $17k. The problem is at that point the folks willing to accept a car like this would be tempted away by a Civic coupe. That combined with the increasingly small market for an economical coupe and I’m not surprised it’s going away. Frankly, I’m surprised and impressed it was brought to market to begin with.
Newsflash: two door cars with two rows of seats suck. Film at 11.
Unless you’re buying a halo car, we largely got the whole “coupe” thing out of our collective systems with the WRX and SRT-4. Personally, every two-door “performance variant” can DIAF, providing they give their four/five-door siblings their chassis and powertrain on the way out.
If they would build four doors without the B-pillar so far forward, I wouldn’t care. Unfortunately, having a rear door means that is functional requires a certain amount of space, so if you put the front seat all the way back, you wind up with the pillar blocking your side view, door armrests that are too far forward, and windowsills that are inhospitable to elbows.
If you have short legs, it’s not an issue, but for someone who ALWAYS has the seat all the way back, it’s annoying.
The Hyundai Veloster is a great concept that somehow made it to production: A full size door on the driver’s side, and two shrunken sedan-sized doors on the passenger side. I told my wife it was the perfect car for us – I complain about her fourdoor whenever I have to drive it, she complains about my two-door whenever we carry passengers.
The coupe market is dying. Ask Cadillac.
The new ATS coupe. Lincoln has been coupe less since the last Mark VIII in the 1998 model year.
I knew this thing would fail from the jump. The sedan looks more aggressive and coupe like, and its 4 doors help break up the side profile a bit. The coupe, like the old Focus coupe, looks too upright, too slab sided, too boring. They made zero effort to give anyone a reason to buy this over the more attractive sedan or GT hatchback.
Yep! And Hyundai had the more practical Veloster and the much better driving Genesis Coupe.
It says something that the Scion tC isn’t listed as a competitor–not much awareness of its existence, either.
Who would have thought that combining the slow and dull driving experience of an Elantra sedan with all the packaging compromises of a sports car would not be a sales hit?
If you’re going to make coupe at least make an attempt at making fun to drive.
It’s not a bad looking car – apart from the front, which looks like it has a black abscess appearing from within the bumper cover.
Yikes.
Aside from that, I bet it’s pathetically underpowered. I wonder if OEMs outside the premiums will ever cotton on that coupe models need more than a svelte two-door design to catch potential buyers?