Hyundai Elantra Blue: It Exists
Posted by Doug DeMuro in It Exists on | 11 comments
I recently discovered something unusual: a rare Korean car.
I write a lot about rare cars here, but almost never about rare Korean cars. That’s because the Koreans don’t tend to build rare cars. Instead, they build volume cars in huge numbers and hardly pause to think things like: What if we did a convertible pickup? It’s for this reason, I believe, that car enthusiasts have generally not latched on to Korean cars.
But today I bring you one Korean car that is unusual: the Elantra Blue.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’ve looked at the photo and you’re thinking: That’s just a normal Elantra! And you are, for the most part, completely correct. But the Elantra Blue is rare, entirely because it was Blue.
So you might be wondering exactly why a paint job makes a car rare. Well, it isn’t the paint job. It turns out that Hyundai once offered a trim level called “Elantra Blue.” In fact, it even showed up on the trunklid in order to prove its specialness:
The Elantra Blue was a special high-efficiency version of the standard Elantra with a stick shift and improved, efficiency-minded gear ratios. And here’s the coolest part: it was only available for the 2010 model year.
A one-year-only, ultra-rare Hyundai trim level? The Elantra Blue is sort of an automotive unicorn. And if you ever see one on the road, now you know.
11 Responses to “ “Hyundai Elantra Blue: It Exists”
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I love learning this kind of stuff… No, seriously – thanks!
is blue korean for green?
No, it is also for Germans like Mercedes’ BlueEfficiency and VW’s Bluemotion and Toyota also like to put a lot of blue stuff in their hybrid models so I guess that the really ecological cars are blue now.
Funny thing really, but I hear in Korean language the colour blue and green are actually interchanged in different situations. True fact.
I’ve found some of these on cars.com, and I’ve seen a few on the road. They’re just super basic Elantras; I don’t even know if they have A/C.
No A/C would help improve mpg, a little bit.
Take back what I said, sorry. I just found a Blue on carmax.com, and it has A/C, power windows, power locks, ABS, etc. And it was silver too.
I remember talking a friend of mine into one of these back in 2010. All he wanted was a cheap car with a stick shift and this is what he chose among the options I gave him. Obviously he is not a car person.
I didn’t learn about these until I had already worked at a Hyundai service department for a year. Another favorite hidden gem was the Accent SE, which had stiffer KYB shocks, alloys, a spoiler and a B&M short-shifter. Racy!
Well done Doug, just when I get cocky thinking I know everything there is to know about cars, and then you go and find something else I’ve never heard of… And its a US market car at that! I guess none of the buff books did a review of these back then? Or maybe I just saw the pic and skipped the article. Either way, very interesting.
The 2010 Elantra BLUE basically took the place of the 2009 Elantra GLS 5-speed manual. The 2010 GLS was only available with the 4-speed automatic and with A/C, 6-spkr AM/FM/CD and cruise.
Technically, the 2010 Elantra BLUE was priced at $14,865, which was $2,750 less than the 2010 Elantra GLS. But the BLUE’s only option was a $1700 ‘Comfort Package’ that added A/C, 6-spkr audio, cruise control and AUX/USB ports. The difference between the 2010 BLUE and 2010 GLS was only $1,050 with the Comfort Package added. That $1,050 difference was mainly the 4-speed automatic on the GLS. The GLS also had fog lights, auxiliary visors, illuminated vanity mirrors and a few other small details.
In addition to Dark (Regatta) Blue, it also came in Silver, Gray and Black.