2021 Hyundai HB20 Reimagined With All-New Tucson’s Exterior Design

HB means Hyundai Brazil while 20 is the automaker’s nomenclature for a B-segment passenger car. Last redesigned a year ago, the HB20 has been Photoshopped into a far sexier means of personal transportation by Brazilian pixel artist Kleber Silva. The Tucson makeover gives the econobox a totally different look, but it would be wishful thinking to expect a facelift with these exterior styling cues.

You see, the HB20 is a low-cost car for emerging markets where household income is lower than in the United States of America or Europe. The front fascia of the Tucson as well as the LED taillights and onboard technology would raise the starting price to a level that’s simply unattainable for most B-segment customers.

A sedan as well as faux crossover option are also offered in Brazil, and all of them come with a rather bland design language and few features as standard as a result of the low-cost philosophy. For example, Kappa 1.0 is the base engine and it’s connected as standard to a five-speed manual instead of a six-speed transmission. It’s not powerful either at 80 ponies on ethanol and 75 on gasoline, translating to 14.5 and 15.4 seconds to 100 km/h (62 mph).

When all is said and done, Hyundai did the right thing by keeping the HB20 as Spartan as possible instead of bringing it closer to the i20. Believe it or not, the HB20 is the third best-selling car in Brazil with 101,590 sales in 2019 as per the Federacao Nacional da Distribuicao de Veiculos Automotores.

Having mentioned the Tucson so much, did you know that Hyundai Motor Brazil still sells the compact crossover’s predecessor in the South American country? ix35 is how it’s called, and the underpinnings date back to 2009 when the second generation of the Tucson rolled out.