The Hyundai Tiburon is attractive and stylish in a field of stylish coupes. It looks good from every angle. The Tiburon looks bigger in photographs; in real life it's dramatically low and compact, comparable in size to the Mitsubishi Eclipse and the aging Toyota Celica.At the Tiburon's nose, four headlights peer from behind plastic covers. Large turn signals lead up into the false fender line that is actually part of the hood. The front of the hood leads down into a small horizontal grill that is swamped by a large bumper. A much larger five-slot air opening is nicely integrated into the lower part of the bumper and includes two small round fog lights.
The Tiburon looks best in profile. It follows the classic lines of a grand touring car with a heavily raked windshield and a roofline that sweeps all the way to its abbreviated tail, a fastback coupe. Hyundai's designers have added pizzazz to the profile by slashing the front fender with vertical louvers that look like shark gills, and then streaking a sheet-metal crease upward and rearward from the front wheel opening to the high, flared rear fender. In the rear the fenders curve into the large, almost ovoid one-piece taillight clusters.