SPY PICS: Hiding in plain sight?

Would you believe it? Our fabulous spy photographers at Carparazzi spotted a prototype of the next Hyundai Sonata a week ago -- dropping off an engineer at the Detroit Airport.

There are people flying in and out of the airport there to work in the car industry, people who know about cars, people who might even take an interest in an obviously disguised new model and could have one of those new fangled camera phone contraptions with them.

Anyway, we digress. This particular car was seen again -- and photographed this time -- on the road in California, clear across the country from the Detroit Airport.

Underneath the 'bra and panties', the next Sonata will be a facelift model, presumably moving away from the VY Commodore look and heading in the direction of the Genesis large car.

The Carparazzi guys think that the new Sonata will launch in time for the 2009 model year, which is late 2008. Assuming that we see the new car the same time as everywhere else, we're guessing it will be here for the 2008 AIMS in Sydney (and in Detroit for the NAIAS in January 2009!)

-- with Carparazzi