Is this the new Hyundai ix35? Apparently not.

We have another photo of what seems to be a new Hyundai ix35 (or a facelift). But it’s not.

Last week we had what we thought was a photo of a 2013 facelift for the Hyundai ix35, snapped in Korea and with what appeared to be a new Santa Fe-esque nose on the front.

That led us to conclude that this Korean ix35 was a prelude to a facelift for the ix35 in the rest of the world, perhaps arriving as soon as Paris in September.

And now we have a second photo of an ix35 in Korea sporting the new nose, but this time it’s a different car. So there’s more than one. All the more reason to believe that this is the new ix35.

So we’ve had a dig around and discovered that what appears to be at least a pair of facelifted ix35s on the roads in Korea is in fact the ix35 Fuel Cell fleet Hyundai are testing and, for reasons we can’t get to the bottom of, are running round with a new nose.

It seems clear that Hyundai are planning to give the ix35 a facelift – although after a bit of digging we don’t believe we’ll see it until 2013 – but this isn’t it. The facelift will be more modest and will be just minor tweaks when it arrives in Europe – probably at Geneva 2013.

Which is a bit of a shame. We thought the new nose suited the Hyundai ix35.