Hyundai i30 N
We head to Lapland not to see Santa’s sleigh but a hotted-up Hyundai...
How lairy should a hot hatch be? This is the question Hyundai is currently pondering. Specifcally its stability control engineers, who are tucked up in Arjeplog in deepest, snowiest Sweden. We’ve joined them for a day of testing the new i30 N, the Korean company’s frst bona fde hot hatch.
Hyundai’s given us fast i30s before, but they’ve been a standard car with a mildly tuned engine. The car you see here is proper. Still front-drive, but with its suspension components refreshed, and new, big brakes up front. Plus an ESC system that’s undergoing very thoughtful development.
“Turn the system of and you can play as much as you like – the driver must catch it,” says Alexander Eichler, head of Hyundai’s fast car development. “It’s important to have a real ‘of’ mode; many of our customers want that.”
The car’s full reveal is months away, so Hyundai is cagey on specs. But there’ll be two models, a standard i30 N and a Performance Pack car. Both get a 2.0-litre 4cyl turbo petrol, linked to a 6spd manual. The former should have around 270bhp, the latter around 290bhp and with an electronic dif set-up on the front axle. Expect 0–62mph in the low sixes and a 155mph top speed for both.
Our prototype is a Performance Pack car, and frst impressions are positive. The steering wheel comes close to your chest, while the hugging sports seat feels nice and low. There are shift lights at the top of the dash, and orange-to-red illumination around the upper quarter of the rev-counter.
Eichler tells us he doesn’t want to discuss rivals. But the i30 N sits in a car park between a Honda Civic Type R and a VW Golf GTI, while a Seat Leon Cupra lurks around a corner. They’re all here for benchmark testing. “We don’t always follow everything they do,” says Eichler. “We just want to get an impression of how they do it, and in which range. Then we can defne which way we want to go. And we want to make something new.”
To get a feel for the i30 N, I’ve been given free use of drift circles, a long ABS straight and a handling circuit to hurl myself around. Yeah, tough gig. What emerges is a picture of a car that’s forgiving, rather than famboyant. Keep the stability control frmly on and there’s a small amount of slip, owing to just how icy things are underfoot, but the car quickly reins things in.
It’s mere seconds before I cycle into the intermediate ESC Sport mode, then. Keep your driving sensible and there’s still very little slip: this is a car you need to provoke into sliding with aggressive braking into a turn or, better yet, a dramatic lift of the throttle. Once a slide begins, just a small amount of corrective lock tidies it back up and has you pointing straight again.
Time to turn things of completely. The car isn’t signifcantly keener to slide, though does ofer you the chance to hold the angle when it does. But understeer is far more prevalent without some subtle electronics keeping it in check. Eichler admits some intervention may creep back in here before the i30 N is signed of, though only to help you turn. You’ll still have to sort the slides out.
I arrive back at base and Thierry Neuville – Hyundai’s lead World Rally driver – takes me for a few laps of the handling circuit, his right hand never an inch away from the manual handbrake. He’s entering corners at angles I’d have long since given up on. “For me, front-drive is the best school a rally driver can get, because it makes you drive very cleanly and efciently,” Neuville says.
“When you have a rear-drive car you always drive sideways, and then you don’t learn to be efcient. All the drivers in WRC who learned with FWD are smoother and cleaner. The ones who learned with RWD go very sideways.” Thierry, believe it or not, learned via a front-driven Nova.
When discussing fast cars nowadays, a Nürburgring namedrop feels inevitable. It’s what the N on the steering wheel stands for and it’s the site of many Hyundai development miles.
Honda, VW and Seat – the makers of those benchmarking cars – have traded hot hatch lap records with each other in recent years. Hyundai, though, isn’t interested. “Fun to drive has the same value as lap times,” developer Sven Risch says. For evidence the i30 N might provide nearly as many grins on tarmac as it has today on snow, it’s a superb sentence to hear.