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While Hyundai brought a pair of pretty standard tuner cars to the 2017 SEMA show, it also displayed a couple of weird ones, and the brand’s stand was all the better for it. Bisimoto Engineering’s HyperEconiq Ioniq takes performance engineering and puts it in the service of efficiency, while Rockstar Performance Garage’s Santa Fe Sport turns a soft-roader into a pretty credible go-anywhere machine.
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Bisi Ezerioha is best known around the halls of SEMA for stuffing wildly powerful engines into unsuspecting vehicles. With the HyperIoniq, based on Hyundai’s Ioniq hybrid, his company flipped the script and applied years of tuning expertise to the task of squeezing maximum efficiency out of the commuter special. Most immediately noticeable are the rear fender spats meant to increase aerodynamic efficiency. Set up with a pulse-chamber exhaust system, Racepack OBD-monitoring electronics with an interactive OBD cluster, Carbon Revolution 19-by-5-inch one-piece carbon-fiber wheels, Buddy Club aluminum calipers, Recaro Pole Position racing seats, and a Progress Performance dropped coil-over suspension, it also sports enhanced generators, all in the pursuit of the mighty mpg. Bisimoto claims that the mods are good for 80 miles per gallon in regular driving. We managed 52 mpg out of the stock Ioniq hybrid in our highway testing. A 28-mpg jump is serious business, but then again, Bisi has pretty much dedicated his life to posting crazy numbers.
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On the other side of the divide lies the Hyundai Santa Fe Sport Moab Extreme, put together by the caffeine swillers at Rockstar Performance Garage. It’s got a Cascadia tent on the roof and a Kicker sound system inside, and it rolls on 17-inch KMC Machete beadlock wheels wearing 35-inch Mickey Thompson Baja MTZ tires hung from the car by King coil-overs with 2.5-inch internal bypass shocks with reservoirs. To handle the bashing, Rockstar fabbed up some skid plates and tucked a Warn winch in behind the grille. In its none-more-digi black camo paint job, it looks surprisingly tough, like it’d be at home playing with the new Jeep Wrangler out on Utah’s red rocks.
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Rockstar also upgraded the power with an AEM intake as well as a Mishimoto intercooler and downpipe. Spent gases exit via a Magnaflow exhaust system. Oh, and did we mention that it’s got a wet N2O system from Nitrous Express? Nitrous and a tent? It’s gotta be either a Dead show or the SEMA show, man.
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