Hyundai i10 N Line
Hyundai takes on the VW Up GTI by giving the i10 a turbo and some sporty tweaks
City car gets turbo, eyes Up GTI
There’s been a range-topping addition to Hyundai’s i10 city car line. The i10 N Line adds turbo power to the car’s armoury for the first time. It’s powered by a 1.0-litre turbo three-pot petrol motor that makes 99bhp and 127lb ft. Not quite enough, we’d say, for the car to stand shoulder to shoulder with the slightly peppier and widely acclaimed Volkswagen Up GTI, but Hyundai clearly believes otherwise and has priced this car with ambition to go head to head with the VW.
Should it have? Well, sporty superminis have certainly been built on less. This car does have shiny pedals and some jazzy red exterior styling parts. It has gently overhauled suspension, too – stiffer coil springs, retuned dampers and new rear axle bump stops. They add a thin but just perceptible layer of extra body control and chassis response, making for only very mildly purposeful and entertaining handling. At least, they do so without compromising ride comfort, which remains pretty good.
The engine, meanwhile, adds welcome drivability, but not the extra audible and textural fizz you might expect to come with it. Enough torque is supplied to make for at least a little urgency through the higher gears, although you wouldn’t call the performance ‘fun’, since the motor doesn’t spin beyond 5000rpm particularly freely and isn’t made to sound all that characterful. And the shift quality of the five-speed manual gearbox is respectable but no better.
The above ingredients are what we might call ‘the trees’ for this car. And ‘the wood’ that the Hyundai product planners appear to have missed? That because Hyundai’s N brand doesn’t confer much desirability yet and the car’s design makeover is somewhat half-heated, none of these things makes it a credible alternative to the Up GTI. The N brand is, after all, only one fully fledged hot hatchback old as far as UK enthusiasts are concerned – and that car is by no means universally recognised as a world-beater. It’s very early days to be sweating a performance brand like this.