If you’re looking to get into a high-performance Hyundai today, you have just two options—albeit, pretty good ones. There’s the rockin’ Elantra N sedan and the real-life racing simulator Ioniq 5 N EV. It seems there’s a chance that could change in the future, or so we gather from a recent video the automaker uploaded to its YouTube channel.
Earlier this week, Hyundai released a 3.5-minute video that, at first glance, seems like a lame, HR-mandated piece primarily for marketing purposes. According to the description, the footage featuring a Hyundai engineer tasked with designing intake and exhaust systems is divided into 13 segments, and much to everyone’s surprise, one of them mentions current work being done on “high efficiency, high performance” engines, including the famous “RM engine.”
“Our team is working on increasing engine performance, developing a dedicated RM engine, developing a hybrid engine, and developing a high-performance engine,” the engineer says in the video, according to two auto translation sources.
Hyundai’s RM moniker, which stands for Racing Midship, is reserved for, well, you guessed it, racing-bound or racing-inspired mid-engine cars. The RM14 was a high-performance mid-engine Veloster, with further evolutions of the prototype labeled RM15, RM16, and, most recently, RM19.
So, now an employee is going on the record claiming that Hyundai is actively working on yet another Racing Midship engine. While this certainly doesn’t mean that anything will come to market, it highlights Hyundai’s mission to have an incredibly diverse vehicle portfolio and its hunger to beat BMW in the luxury, tech, high-performance, and motorsport-derived sectors.
Let’s not forget that while Hyundai no longer offers the Veloster, it can use the RM engines in its Genesis products. Back in 2022, Albert Biermann confirmed that the RM project was being axed due to its unrealistic $150,000 potential price tag. However, with Hyundai’s luxury brand certainly aiming to produce more Magma performance versions in the future—as the marketing sidecar of its WEC debut next year—this could be a possibility in the future.
“Our team is working on developing a new Genesis engine,” says the engineer, while emphasizing “emissions reduction technology, high-efficiency combustion, and lightweight design.”
It’s worth noting that other reports published about this video have mentioned a “high-revving engine” and a “high-speed unit,” but none of my research or translation turned up such keywords, and sadly, I’m not fluent in Korean. However, I was able to confirm the engineer’s mention of how the automaker is dealing with “multiple challenges” to make these various engines a reality, specifically due to “market and regulatory constraints like financial climates and emissions laws.”
Whether a vehicle with an RM badge will eventually turn up at dealers in the U.S. or even a racetrack is anyone’s guess, but now we know that Hyundai isn’t giving up on the cool stuff.
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As deputy editor, Jerry draws on a decade of industry experience and a lifelong passion for motorsports to guide The Drive’s short- and long-term coverage.
