This week: a Giugiaro-drawn VW hatchback, a sharp-lined Korean coupe, and a squall-named Maserati SUV.
The classic · 1976
1976 Volkswagen Rabbit
Volkswagen needed a successor to the Beetle, but it was nervous about abandoning the formula that had paid the bills for decades. The answer was hiding inside Audi: a compact, transverse four-cylinder and front-wheel-drive layout developed for the little Audi 50. Volkswagen scaled that package up, handed the shape to Giorgetto Giugiaro, and got a boxy hatchback that used space far better than the old rear-engined car. In America it wore the Rabbit name and cost less than $3,000 in its leanest form. More than 100,000 arrived in the Rabbit's first full year, and Volkswagen still built Beetles beside it for years, just in case the new car failed. The Golf line has since passed 37 million worldwide.
Hyundai entered the American market with the cheap Excel, then realized that selling affordable cars was not enough to change its reputation. The Scoupe was the company's attempt at a halo: a low, sharp little coupe built on the Excel platform and shown first as the SLC concept at the 1989 Tokyo Motor Show. Its 1.5-liter four-cylinder came from Mitsubishi, giving the body a sporty promise without the cost of a clean-sheet powertrain. The formula was clever, if modest. Korean buyers responded: about 242,000 Scoupes were sold between 1990 and 1995, with 26,421 finding homes in the first full year. Hyundai ended the car after 1995; even the name was a mash-up of "sport" and "coupe."
The Levante was Maserati's first SUV, but the company refused to give it an ordinary name. Like the Mistral, Ghibli, Bora, and Khamsin before it, the Levante takes its name from a Mediterranean wind that can jump from calm to gale in minutes. For 2022 the range was simplified to three versions: GT, Modena, and Trofeo. The extremes were still there, from a V6 to the Trofeo's V8, while the GT introduced a four-cylinder hybrid, Maserati's first electrified Levante. The name is not marketing poetry: levante is the warm easterly wind that rises over the western Mediterranean. A new Trident on the C-pillar and Maserati script on the tail cleaned up the details without changing the storm underneath.
