Alfred Hong tells Carscoop: "Snapped these pictures in Fullerton, California over the weekend. I believe it to be the 2012 Hyundai Elantra Coupe! I know this car will debut at the LA Auto Show later this month, but I have yet to see some good spy shots on the web."
Well Alfred, you're spot on: indeed, what we see here is the much anticipated, 2012 (or 2013MY) Hyundai Elantra Coupe. However, we're not 100 percent sure that it will make its world premiere at the 2011 Los Angeles Auto Show. In an earlier posting today, Autoblog's head honcho John Neff said that the South Korean automaker would wait until next February for the Chicago Auto Show to unveil the coupe to the public.
Regardless of where the debut takes place, the new Hyundai Elantra Coupe should hit U.S. and Canadian showrooms before fall of 2012.
While most automakers abandoned the coupe subdivision of the compact car category, the Hyundai-Kia Group made its move first with the Kia Koup and now with the two-door version of the Elantra that will compete directly with the Honda Civic Coupe in the States.
The Coupe model shares many parts with the Elantra sedan such as the front-end design, but it also gets a swoopier roofline and possibly, a different treatment for the boot lid design. The interior appears to be similar to its four-door sibling.
We previously speculated that the Elantra Coupe would keep the sedan model's 1.8-liter engine producing 148-horsepower and 138 lb-ft of peak torque, matched to a 6-speed manual gearbox or an optional 6-speed automatic transmission.
But we also said that Hyundai's brand new 1.6-liter turbocharged four-banger with around 204HP, may be offered down the line. Could the dual exhaust tailpipes mean that this prototype is equipped with the turbo engine? It is a possibility, but there's no way of being sure about it unless someone from Hyundai confirms it.
We'll keep an eye open and bring you more details once we get them.
Special thanks to reader Alfred Hong for the spy shots!
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