A Complete Transformation
As of 2022, Hyundai only offers the Veloster in one flavor: The 275-horsepower Veloster N. It’s a fully realized hot hatch, with a 6-speed manual, turbocharged DOHC 2.0-liter four, fully defeatable stability control with Competition Mode and Launch Control, and Pirelli P Zero PZ4 tires developed specifically for it. It’s the complete package.
This wasn’t always the case. Hyundai’s earlier sporty Veloster, the Veloster Turbo, essentially came out as a budget hatchback with a turbo bolted to it. It felt at war with itself; the extra power was nice, but it had to work against the underdeveloped chassis and lack of structural rigidity (thanks to a roof and rear mostly made out of glass). While its dual center exhaust tips were nifty, the car as a whole lacked cohesion.
The old and new Velosters offer case studies for understanding more than product planning. In fact, the old partially upgraded Veloster represents how some early Christ-followers were living: content with just one part of themselves upgraded by God. In his letter to the new church in Corinth, Paul pointed out why this was wrong.
“In the following directives I have no praise for you, for your meetings do more harm than good. In the first place, I hear that when you come together as a church, there are divisions among you, and to some extent I believe it… when you come together, it is not the Lord’s Supper you eat, for as you eat, each of you goes ahead without waiting for anybody else. One remains hungry, another gets drunk.” (1 Corinthians 11:17-18, 20-21).
This passage, usually studied for understanding the role of sacrament in a corporate worship setting, actually says a lot about the heart of a person who’s content with just a partial transformation by God. These were new followers of Christ, but this isn’t what a new creation looks like. They used a place of community and worship to invent and enforce differences among themselves, traded a sacramental experience with God for the pursuit of temporary physical pleasure, and luxuriated in selfishness and greed instead of demonstrating God’s inclusion of people who were marginalized or outcast. No, that’s not a new creation made by God.
That’s not the new you, either. Every day God looks for ways to reveal and celebrate the new you, even if you’ve been a Christ-follower for decades. There’s a new way for understanding why people close to you cause you grief, a new patience for how slow your progress is in problem areas, and new intentionality to not take the easy road but seek people who are broken and need to know God’s restorative power. You are not just the old you who happens to go to church on Sundays. You’re not a budget hatchback with a turbocharged heart. You’re a whole new creation.
You have been remade with a new purpose and a new competency. It’s all God-powered performance in every category of your life. When Christ-followers embrace the totality of God’s transformative power, their time together is transformed too. By urging individual group members to undergo a total transformation, Paul showed how the church as a whole becomes transformed to work as one body for the glory of God.
The Veloster N doesn’t have much competition in the asymmetrical-door-Korean-hot-hatch segment. But, with a $33,000 MSRP, it’s priced closely to the Subaru BRZ and Toyota GR86 coupes. You won’t find incomplete versions of those either; like the Veloster N, they’re designed and built with a cohesive goal. They already come as the complete package.
