Hyundai Challenges Porsche-Challenging MINI to a Race

Ask and you shall receive. MINI USA’s boss, Jim McDowell challenged Porsche to some kind of race on the Road Atlanta track. As everyone could’ve imagined, the rear-engined brand refused and MINI’s attempts(one & two) to change that were unsuccessful.

However, Hyundai has stepped in, offering to take Porsche’s place and race MINI at Road Atlanta. The Korean carmaker has thrown in the Genesis Coupe, together with some bold lines, such as “Our driver’s a bit busy this week preparing to set the World Record at Pikes Peak… but July is looking good.”

Hyundai’s initiative sounds like a great idea and is packed with new-age marketing goodies. In fact it seems so fun that it even helps us ignore the mediocre video package it was wrapped in.

You can check out the video, which looks like it was created by a true video editing rising star... who is 7 years old, after the jump and taste Hyundai’s delicious auto-irony (it goes something like this:” The name’s Hyundai... like Sunday...”).

Nevertheless, it seems that Hyundai didn’t manage to make an offer that can’t be refused (will we have to wait for an Italian brand to do that?), as MINI has ignored the Koreean’s call to play until now.

We understand that MINI wanted to jump a few levels and take on a brand like Porsche, but this shouldn’t mean that it can’t accept Hyundai’s proposal. After all, if MINI USA is so creative, it should be able to find a proper way of using both the “we beat Hyundai” and “we didn’t beat Hyundai” t-shirts.

What now, McDowell?