The year 2022 has been a good one for Korean car brand Hyundai so far. Fresh from winning World Car Design of the Year, the company are now celebrating a trio of prizes at the Autocar Awards.

The world’s oldest motoring magazine holds an annual event to recognise the very best cars and achievements in vehicle design, and this year Hyundai were well represented in all areas.

The Hyundai SANTA FE was the winner of the Best Large Car accolade, while the innovative i20N won a timely title of Britain’s Most Affordable Driver’s Car.

For a company which prides itself on its cutting edge design, the prize which will have been most greatly received will have been the Design Hero of the Year, which went to SangYup Lee, the company’s Executive Vice President and Head of Hyundai Global Design Centre.

Hyundai have been collecting design awards across many ceremonies over the past few years, with the IONIQ 5, which won the World Car of the Year recently at the heart of the that.

Speaking about the nomination of SangYup Lee, Mark Tisshaw, Autocar Editor said: “SangYup Lee joined Hyundai in 2016 and, as chief designer for Hyundai and Genesis, he’s overseeing the creation of 50 production cars at any one time across 11 design centres globally, with a team of 700 people. As a part of his role, he has masterminded a transformation in Hyundai design that has seen it become increasingly admired, most markedly for the IONIQ 5 but also for the upcoming IONIQ 6 and IONIQ 7, as previewed by the Prophecy and Seven concepts.”

Hyundai’s design credentials will come as no surprise, they have collected World Car Design of the Year in 2022, and also won in nine separate categories at the recent iF design awards, the ninth year in succession they have collected silverware.

Speaking about his Design Hero prize, Lee said: “Looking back through the previous winners of Autocar’s Design Hero Award, it’s a real honour to now be sitting alongside some of the people I consider to be my own design heroes.”

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