Hyundai i30

NOT LONG ago, Hyundai was the go-to manufacturer for small, cheap cars with plenty of room for shopping. The Korean maker still aces the supermarket run but these days it also sells a hot hatchback good for 155mph and a six-second dash from zero to 60mph.

Engineered by staff who have only recently defected from BMW and Mercedes, Hyundai’s i30N makes Volkswagen’s Golf GTI seem a little bland, not to mention slow off the mark, overpriced and stingily equipped.

Now Hyundai has taken the i30N ingredients and put them into a more grown up package that’s less easily imagined screeching around Silverstone. The result is this new i30 Fastback N. From the front it is clearly related to the hatchback but the roofline is an inch lower and arcs like a coupe, before sloping into a rear end more than four inches longer than before, though it still remains a hatchback.

You get smart 19in alloy wheels wrapped in Pirelli P Zero tyres, unique bumpers with cooling slots and rear diffusers that ape a racecar, red “character lines” that we might once have called go-faster stripes and an attractive ducktail rear spoiler.

It’s a sporty feel but also a much more sophisticated look than the usual boy-racer hatchback. So much so that it’s easy to assume there’s a lot of money between the two models when specified in the same, most-powerful trim, but there isn’t. Still, this is a Hyundai that’s now a fiver short of £30,000.

Logical, then, that Hyundai has specified the i30 Fastback N only in its more powerful, better-equipped trim. That brings a 2.0-litre turbocharged engine that works the front tyres hard