hyundai passo corte 01

The term once adorned the Ferrari 250 GT Berlinetta short wheel-base, and it's now the name of a Hyundai concept which is bound for Geneva. The Hyundai PassoCorto is a mid-engined, two-seater sports car study powered by a 267 hp 1.6 litre four-cylinder twin-turbo mill.

The 4.1 metre-long offering isn't quite the complete work of the Korean automaker, even though the project was led by its European Design Centre. Primary design work on the PassoCorto was from a class of sixteen students on a Master in Transportation Design course at Turin's Istituto Europeo di Design (IED), with the project being coordinated by Pininfarina's lead designer, Luca Borgogno.

hyundai passo corte 02

Working on the design brief handed out by Hyundai Design, which was to come up with a vehicle that Gen-Y consumers would want to own and drive, the entire class submitted design proposals, whittling it down to two that were judged to best fit the initial brief - the two designs were then merged together into the final model, combining around 70% of one proposal and 30% of the other.

The PassoCorto, which is the tenth full-scale model created by the clever folk at IED, is unlikely to see the light of day production-wise, but Hyundai shouldn't now be short of ideas if it ever wants to go series on a mid-engined sports car, hey?