Hyundai won't come out and just tell us what Veloster means. "There's lots of speculation on this," a Hyundai spokesman told us, "but really, it's just a name we created that we felt fit the car.



"Similar to the third door," he continued. "We leave the interpretation up to the consumer."



Fine, then. We'll interpret.



The 2012 Hyundai Veloster (pronounced vuh-los-ter) is an extremely stylish and playful-looking hatchback, so Veloster must come from the word "velocity," which, according to The Great Dictionary of Mike means: "not slow."





But with a 0-60-mph time of 10.2 seconds (9.8 seconds with a 1-foot rollout like at a drag strip) and a quarter-mile time of 17.4 seconds at 81.2 mph, the Veloster is emphatically slow.