As one of our favorite local events, Cars and Coffee in Irvine, CA brings together gear-heads from all over Southern California at the crack of dawn to indulge in a parking lot full of cool, rare and exotic vehicles. The event has been going on for years and happens every Saturday morning unless Mother Nature says otherwise. Some of the coolest cars I’ve ever seen have shown up at this event and, if you’re lucky, something extremely rare might show up that weekend.
Last week we hinted at showing up to Cars and Coffee with some of our own rare product not in production, yet. With some encouragement from our Twitter followers, we decided to bring two 2013 Veloster Turbo prototypes, a 2013 Elantra GT and the refreshed 2013 Genesis Coupe 3.8 R-Spec for local C & Cers to see in the flesh. While not meant as a marketing exercise, we let fans and employees know of our plans in case they wanted to come spend the morning with us.
The event was great and we enjoyed the support from fans, friends and co-workers like our CEO John Krafcik, Product Planning head Mike O’Brien and Veloster Turbo manager Brandon Ramirez. Even rally racer and drifter Rhys Millen showed up! It was encouraging to hear the general excitement about our new products and the innovative things we’re doing at Hyundai.
We’d like to thank Cars and Coffee for being gracious to us at their event and our fans, followers and employees for coming out to support us. Until next time!
It’s great the the people in CA were able to see the new product, but how come here in South Florida we have the Fort Lauderdale Auto Show this weekend and no new product on display?
Azera
Genesis Coupe
Elantra Coupe
Elantra GT
Veloster Turbo
Two of your 10 largest dealers in the US are within 20 miles of the show, and no new product to excite the customers in the area? Not even the Genesis Coupe which the dealer says the first ones are at the port and on order for them???
You guys have the largest & best display there, but who wants to look at an Elantra Touring when the GT is less than 6 months away from replacing it?
Chuck, sometimes we don’t have the future vehicles available to make the show timing. The cars we showed during Cars and Coffee were prototypes and we only have a few of them for internal review and testing. As we get closer to launch, they will make their way in to shows. Hope that helps.
Glad I read this post and the comment. Thinking about Dallas Auto Show. Main purpose was to see newest Hyundai’s without having to go to dealership, but reconsidering if Hyundai doesn’t display the latest.
Derf, our auto show coverage changes up every year. We’re not at all shows due to timing and logistics. We try our best to be, though!
Glad to see you keeping this blog going, Rob. I have heard great things about you and your work. Keep it up.
Thanks, Dan! Looking forward to meeting one day.