Junkyard Find: 2012 Hyundai Equus
When the first Hyundai Excels appeared on American streets as 1986 models, bearing shockingly cheap price tags, did anyone imagine that someday there would be a big, ostentatious Hyundai luxury sedan with serious V8 power available here? It happened, and I found one of those machines in a car graveyard in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a few weeks back.
To give you an idea of just how amazingly cheap the first US-market Excels were, the only new cars that could undercut the 1986 Excel on MSRP were the wretched Yugo GV and the miserable Subaru STD three-door hatch with four-on-the-floor manual. Even the horrifically obsolete Chevy Chevette cost more—a lot more—than the Excel in 1986.
Even as late as 1992, when "Glengarry Glen Ross" hit theaters, everyone watching knew exactly what Alec Baldwin meant when he told Ed Harris, "You drove a Hyundai to get here tonight. I drove an $80,000 BMW. That's my name!"
Hyundais just got better and better during the 1990s, though, and memories of those shoddy Excels faded.
Back at home, Hyundai had been selling credible luxury machinery (admittedly, often based on Mitsubishi hardware) for quite some time.
The Hyundai Genesis showed up here as a 2009 model and sold quite well. The second-generation Equus debuted in South Korea as a 2010 model, so it seemed like a good idea to ship it across the Pacific.
The Equus first appeared in North America as a 2011 model, and the MSRP for the cheapest version was $58,900 (about $81,136 in 2023 dollars).
I reviewed the 2014 Equus Ultimate and thought it was damn near as nice as the Lexus LS 460. It was more than ten grand cheaper, too (though almost certainly not built as well).
Not many were sold, though. Starting in the 2017 model year, the successor to the Equus became the Genesis G90.
A luxury car this new, no matter how obscure, generally won't show up in a yard like this unless it crashed hard. That doesn't seem to have been the case here, though, since the airbags aren't deployed and junkyard shoppers have purchased most of the front body parts.
We may never know why an 11-year-old Equus met such a fate.
True. Prestige. Equus.
What kind of…?
[Images: The Author]
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Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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In Oklahoma, no less!
"Hyundais just got better and better during the 1990s, though, and memories of those shoddy Excels faded."
Never. A friend had an early 90s Hyundai Excel as his college beater. One day he decided that the last tank of gas he bought was worth more than the car. He drove it to empty and then he and his fraternity brothers pushed it into the woods and left it there.