HYUNDAI’S FIRST HOT HATCH DRIVEN
Hyundai is deadly serious about making the first hot hatch from its new N division a real contender, as our drive of a test car shows
Hot hatchbacks may come and go, each one a potential reason to celebrate or regret, but the launch of a new dynasty of them, backed by one of the world’s largest car makers, is quite an occasion. And a brand-new performance sub-brand is exactly what Hyundai is about to give us.
Hyundai has been involved in the World Rally Championship for the past four years and has been offering R5 customer rally cars for the past three. Next year, it will branch out into customer circuit racing, too. Slowly but surely, it has been building a presence in the European motorsport scene – and it’s almost ready to launch its first proper performance road car with which to tempt race and rally fans to invest in a bit of the technology and expertise they see each weekend.
This fast and exciting new breed of driver’s car will come with an ‘N’ in the model name. ‘N’ stands for both Nürburgring (where Hyundai’s new performance car team has a technical centre and bases its European development projects) and for Namyang (Hyundai’s vast R&D hub in its native South Korea). It was to the ’Ring where we were invited to get our very first taste of what a performance Hyundai might be like to drive, in the form of a disguised prototype version of the new i30n hot hatchback, due on sale in November.
Hyundai’s N brand initiative was established in October 2015, shortly after the arrival of former BMW M division engineering executive Albert Biermann at the Hyundai-kia group. The N team now numbers some 120 employees globally, across design, engineering, test and development departments.
The man in charge at Hyundai’s Nürburgring test centre is Alexander Eichner – an engineer recruited by Biermann in 2016 and whose CV includes lengthy stints working with Mclaren, Mercedes-amg and Porsche through the connections of his former employer, Bosch. With experience like that, Eichner is no novice. For the past 15 months, he has been assembling an embryonic
development team whose specialisms make them worthy of a cult 1980s American TV show. “We have a damping expert, a steering expert, an ESP expert, a bump-stop expert,” Eichner says. If you have a problem and if no-one else can help, maybe you can hire them...
Through Biermann’s connections, the N brand also hired consultant suspension experts charged with recommissioning the i30’s running chassis and helping it compete with Europe’s best hot hatches. So the i30n isn’t just another family hatch that has been lowered and stiffened but instead has new axles with recalibrated suspension kinematics bearing such little resemblance to those of the standard i30 that Eichner can’t even tell you how the cars’ relative ride heights compare.
The i30n has a rack-mounted power steering system (the standard i30 uses a less rigid column-mounted one), as well as adaptive dampers, uprated brakes and brake servos and an active locking front differential. Upper-trim-level Performance Pack cars, such as the one we tried, get a slightly firmer suspension set-up than the standard i30n will, plus 19in alloy wheels and Pirelli P Zero tyres. You’ll be even able to specify items such as a rear strut brace.
The new i30n is powered by a development of Hyundai’s 2.0-litre turbocharged Theta petrol engine, which, in a less specialised tune, powers the firm’s Sonata saloon and Genesis coupé. Hyundai isn’t ready to talk final power and torque yet, but hints at somewhere between 260bhp and 280bhp for the higher-output version of the i30n – all of that being channelled to the front wheels via a six-speed manual gearbox.
When you climb on board the i30n, it gets off to a fine start, with a driver’s seat that’s large, comfortable and supportive, and with well-located controls. At idle, the engine sounds gently sporting, becoming more aurally assertive as you cycle through the car’s various drive modes. The angriest of them, N mode, not only puts the active exhaust into its noisiest setting but also sets the engine ECU to inject unburnt fuel into the exhaust on the overrun, making the twin pipes pop and crackle during fast upshifts. It’s a welcome extra layer of sonic drama that an otherwise slightly plain-sounding motor could certainly do with.
As you move off, the feelsome, hefty, well-paced steering announces itself to your fingertips. This is a system plainly configured by people who understand how important it is that a hot hatchback’s driver feels intimately in touch with its front contact patches. For tactile involvement, the i30n’s steering is right up there. It’s better than any Volkswagen Group product’s and not far off the feedback level of the last Renault Sport Mégane.
The car’s performance level is strong. It’s competitive with most fast front-drivers, with an accelerator that’s easy to meter out in Normal mode but sharper and more sensitive in N. That 2.0-litre engine is plainly very rigidly mounted, contributing
markedly to overall stiffness between the front uprights no doubt, but also struggling noticeably against its moorings as you tip into the accelerator travel. That’s the sort of quirk you’d never feel in a VW Golf GTI. Hyundai says it benchmarked the Mk6 Golf GTI Clubsport quite closely but, in some ways, the i30n conjures an even more hardcore sense of purpose than that VW.
On smooth, fast, well-sighted roads, the car handles for the most part as you’d want. Even in damp conditions, the grip level is high and steering response particularly good. That weight and feel in the rack allows you to turn in confidently and body control contains the car’s mass very well. Handling isn’t as adjustable or playful at road speeds as some rivals, but it’s still engaging.
When the road surface turns choppy, more evidence of skilful dynamic tuning is to be found in the car’s Sport mode damping. It keeps a very sophisticated sense of control over the car, allowing some ride compliance but preventing the body from heaving or deflecting, and maintaining an assured grip level.
In respect of its ride sophistication and its control feedback, the i30n will surprise people. It’s the exact opposite of what you expect it to be, given the number of wannabe performance car makers we’ve seen over the years fit powerful motors into cars that had little else of the special engineering needed to make them work. Eichner claims that if the chassis is so good that it feels like it could handle even more performance, that’s just the consequence of a job done thoroughly rather than a promise of even quicker things to come. We’ll see.
But make no mistake about it: Hyundai is evidently very serious about its new performance ambitions and about making a real, credible alternative driver’s car that deserves same-sentence billing with the hot hatches we all know.
It’ll take a while to build up the reputational equity needed to convince people to buy a Hyundai N instead of a Peugeot or VW GTI, Seat Cupra, Renault Sport or Ford ST, of course. But in more ways than not, the hard work feels as though it has already been done here.
Even in damp conditions, the grip level is high and steering response particularly good