While Saddam was gearing up for The Mother of All Battles, Hyundai was improving on the Excel--the bar was set Death Valley-low for that goal--and selling a sporty coupe based on the second-gen version.
I hadn't thought about the Scoupe (pronounced "scoop" in North America and "ess-cooPAY" in the UK) for many years, but then I ran across this doomed example in a Los Angeles junkyard last week.
Hyundai makes some excellent cars these days, so it's hard to recall how truly terrible their efforts of two decades back really were. Back then, Hyundai was hoping that the Scoupe would add some luster to their "Korean hooptie" image, running TV ads like this '80s-aren't-over-yet one.
That