Hyundai Before Tesla
When the term ‘Sexy’ is associated with cars, it quickly turns to Tesla. After all, they devised their model names so that the initial letters together (more or less) form that word, but Hyundai did something similar fifteen years ago.
S, 3, X and Y. If you put those model names of Tesla together, you get ‘S3XY’ and that can be read as ‘sexy’. Nice Tesla, especially when it was just new. But did you know that there was another car manufacturer who tried to sneak ‘Sexy’ into a model name in a somewhat sneaky way? That was Hyundai, which sold the second generation of the Tucson in Europe as iX35, among other places. That fitted in nicely with the other model names of the brand at the time, such as i30 for the compact hatchback, i10 for the smallest model and iX20 for a high hatchback for pensioners with a bicycle carrier. ‘iX35’, however, meant something else, at least for those who want to see it. Just turn it 180 degrees: that’s right.
Whether this was deliberate is debatable. However, we know thanks to Makecaradsgreatagain (Insta) that there has been at least one local Hyundai branch that has exploited this possibility in an advertisement. They can proudly say that they preceded Tesla, at least in this specific area.
S, 3, X and Y: at Tesla that is certainly no coincidence.