Hyundai Logo and Symbol

What does the Hyundai logo mean?

The Hyundai logo is a slanted H inside an oval, and yes, the H is also a handshake. Hyundai says the Hyundai symbol shows two people shaking hands: a company representative and a satisfied customer. The oval around the Hyundai emblem stands for the company’s global presence.

That is the Hyundai logo meaning in Hyundai’s own words, from its European newsroom, and the Hyundai symbol meaning has not changed since the emblem took its current form in the early 1990s. There are four parts to it:

• The letter: the H is simply the initial of the Hyundai name.
• The handshake: read the two curved uprights as two people leaning toward each other, and the thin crossbar as the point where their hands meet. One figure is Hyundai, the other is a customer who is happy with the deal.
• The oval: the ring around the H stands for Hyundai’s presence around the world.
• The lean: many dealers read the forward tilt of the H as motion and progress. Hyundai’s own explanation focuses on the handshake, so treat this one as a popular reading rather than an official one.

Hyundai logo history: from the HD monogram to the oval H

1. 1960s
2. 1970s
3. 1974–1992
4. 1970s–1992
5. 1984
6. 1990s–2011
7. 2011
8. 2016–Present

The Hyundai logo history runs through eight versions since the late 1960s. Hyundai Motor Company was founded on December 29, 1967, assembled its first car, the Ford Cortina, in 1968, and launched its own Pony in 1975. The Hyundai logo evolution below follows the badge from an HD monogram to the slanted H. Anyone searching for a “Hyundai old logo” usually means one of the HD marks used until 1992.

Late 1960s: HD under a car roof

The first Hyundai Motor emblem paired italic HD letters with a thick, swooping bracket shaped like a car’s roofline. Both sat inside a thin circle, in black and white only. Some sites call the bracket a trapezoid, but the outer frame is round. The start year is disputed: Logopedia says 1967, the year the company was founded, while 1000logos says 1969.

1970s: the HD mark in an oval

Around 1970 the circle was flattened into a wide horizontal oval. The italic HD and the car-roof bracket stayed, stretched slightly to fit, and the mark was still black on white. It was used through the 1970s. Logopedia ends it in 1975 and other logo histories in 1978. An oval frame returned around the H in the 1990s.

1974–1992: the block HD monogram

The old Hyundai logo of the Pony era is a bold block HD. The H and the D share one vertical stroke, and the D has a rounded right side. The pair sits in a rectangle with a thick outer frame and a white gap inside it, so it reads as a double frame. The car-roof bracket and the oval are gone. Hyundai used this monogram from 1974 to 1992.

Late 1970s–1992: HD with the Korean name

In South Korea the HD box often appeared next to the company name. The earlier lockup spelled it in Chinese characters (現代自動車) and the later one in Korean Hangul (현대자동차), which Wikimedia Commons dates to 1984–1992. By the 1980s the lockup appeared in blue. It was a domestic version of the same HD mark, not the clean-sheet 1980 redesign some logo sites describe.

1984 onward: the HYUNDAI wordmark on export cars

Outside Korea the brand was introduced under its name. The uppercase HYUNDAI wordmark has accompanied the badge since the export push of the 1980s, and Logopedia lists it from 1984, the year exports to Canada began. Claims that the wordmark was added in 2003 are wrong. Look closely at the N: it is drawn as a lowercase-style n at capital height, so the word reads HYUnDAI.

Early 1990s–2011: the slanted H in an oval

The logo of Hyundai as most people know it was developed from 1990 and adopted as the corporate emblem in 1992, replacing the HD mark. The HD letters and the car-roof bracket were dropped, and only the oval frame recalls the 1970s badge. It was printed in flat, dark Hyundai blue, usually to the left of the HYUNDAI wordmark. The Hyundai logo meaning explained above belongs to this design.

2011–late 2010s: the 3D silver emblem

In 2011, alongside the slogan “New Thinking. New Possibilities.”, Hyundai introduced a three-dimensional silver rendering of the emblem for corporate use. The oval H kept its shape but gained chrome-style gradients, bevels and highlights, while the wordmark stayed flat dark blue. This version ran through the late 2010s. Sources end it in 2017 or 2018.

2016–present: the flat blue logo

The current Hyundai symbol went back to flat color: the oval H and the HYUNDAI wordmark in dark Hyundai blue, with no gradients. Logopedia dates this version from 2016. It is almost identical to the 1992 artwork, so the difference is the finish, not the drawing. Single-color black or white versions exist for places where blue isn’t practical.

Is there a new Hyundai logo? What changed and what didn’t

Is there a new Hyundai logo in 2023? No. Hyundai hasn’t redesigned its H since the early 1990s. What people see as Hyundai’s new logo is the flat blue rendering dated from 2016, which replaced the shiny 3D silver version introduced in 2011.

Searches for “Hyundai new logo” or “Hyundai logo 2023” turn up logo sites describing a 2023 switch to a minimalist black-and-white badge. We found no Hyundai announcement of any such change, and the official logo is still the flat blue oval H with the wordmark. Here is what you actually see today:

• The flat H: the corporate logo, in flat dark blue, used in print and on screens.
• The chrome badge on cars: the emblem on the grille is a raised chrome badge, so on a new car the logo looks silver rather than blue.
• Black or white versions: single-color variants for places where color isn’t practical. They are usage versions, not a redesign.

Hyundai vs Honda logo: how to tell them apart

The Hyundai and Honda logo designs are not the same, and the two companies are unrelated. Both use an H, but Hyundai’s H is slanted and sits inside an oval, while Honda’s H stands upright and wide inside a rounded frame. Hyundai is South Korean, and Honda is Japanese.

The Hyundai-Honda logo confusion is not new. Jalopnik reports that Hyundai worried an H badge could be confused with Honda’s. Honda is also the older company. It started in 1946 and was incorporated in 1948, while Hyundai Motor Company dates from 1967.

	Hyundai	Honda
Shape of the H	Slanted forward, with curved uprights	Upright, wider at the top than at the bottom
Frame	Oval	Rounded, trapezoid-like frame
Meaning	Initial of Hyundai, plus a handshake between company and customer	Initial of founder Soichiro Honda’s surname
Country	South Korea	Japan
Founded	1967	1946 (incorporated 1948)

Hyundai, Kia and Genesis: one group, three badges

Hyundai, Kia and Genesis all belong to Hyundai Motor Group, and each wears its own badge. Hyundai took a majority stake in Kia in 1998 and still owns 33.88% of it, so Kia does not own Hyundai. Genesis is Hyundai’s own luxury division, and its cars carry a different logo: what people call the Hyundai Genesis logo is the Genesis emblem, not the H.

• Hyundai: the slanted H in an oval, on Hyundai-brand cars.
• Kia: a separate carmaker inside the group, with its own badge. See the Kia logo.
• Genesis: the luxury division, with its own emblem instead of the H. See the Genesis logo.

All three are among the Korean car brands.

What does Hyundai mean? Name and pronunciation

Hyundai is a Korean word, 현대 (現代 in Chinese characters), and it means “modernity” or “modern times.” It is a word, not an acronym. The name is older than the car company: Chung Ju-yung was already using it by 1947 for his construction business, Hyundai Engineering and Construction.

• Hyundai meaning: modernity. The carmaker took the name that Chung Ju-yung’s construction company had used for twenty years.
• How to say it: in the US, “HUN-day,” which rhymes with Sunday. The Korean pronunciation is closer to “hyun-deh.”

The Hyundai car logo: why the emblem looks silver

The Hyundai car logo on the grille is a chrome, three-dimensional badge, not the flat blue artwork. That is why many people describe the Hyundai car symbol as silver. A 2023 Hyundai emblem, the part most people want when they search “Hyundai logo 2023”, has the same slanted H in an oval as the corporate logo; only the finish differs.

• Chrome: the H and the oval are raised and silver, so they catch the light.
• Backing: the Hyundai badge often sits on a blue or black backing behind the chrome.
• Shape: the geometry matches the flat logo, so a Hyundai badge and the printed emblem are the same mark in different finishes.

Hyundai logo font and colors

The Hyundai logo pairs the oval H with an uppercase HYUNDAI wordmark set in a custom, wide geometric sans-serif. Logopedia relates it to Lustra Semi Bold. Its most recognizable detail is the N, drawn as a lowercase-style n at capital height. For its other text, Hyundai uses its own corporate typeface, Hyundai Sans.

• Hyundai blue: a dark blue on white, the official corporate color. See other blue car logos.
• Silver: the chrome finish of the car badge, and of the 3D rendering used from 2011 to the late 2010s.
• Black and white: single-color versions for one-color use, not a separate logo.

Hyundai logo PNG, transparent and black-and-white versions

The Hyundai logo PNG at the top of this page is the current flat blue lockup, the oval H with the HYUNDAI wordmark, on a transparent background. It is a Hyundai logo image in PNG format that works best on light backgrounds. These are the versions in use:

• Blue emblem: the oval H on its own.
• Blue emblem with wordmark: the full lockup, as in the download.
• Black: the single-color version for one-color printing.
• White: the single-color version for dark backgrounds.

The Hyundai symbol and wordmark are trademarks of Hyundai Motor Company. Showing it to identify the brand in articles is generally fine, but commercial use needs Hyundai’s permission.