Doingthe basics
Nowadays you don’t see many brand-new city cars. Vauxhall no longer sells the Viva or Adam in Britain, nor Renault the Twingo, and there are serious questions about whether Citroen and Peugeot will ever replace the C1 and 108. Meanwhile the VW Group’s city cars have gone electric (and expensive) – petrol-powered versions of the Seat Mii and Skoda Citigo are no more, and the VW Up range has been simplified. There is just no profit in small cars, especially now you have to fill them with big car tech and engineer your way around incredibly tight emissions regulations.
Unless you’re Hyundai, that is. The i10 is its bread and butter – more than a million have been sold since the original came out in 2007, and the company reckons that a) there’s still sufficient demand for cars like this, and b) it can do it profitably.
The new car sits on an all-new platform, with a longer wheelbase for increased passenger and cargo space (if you really need to put an adult in the back, you can), but uses the same small, naturally aspirated petrol engines as the outgoing model – a 1.2 or 1.0-litre. Both do the job just fine – the former has (marginally) more pace, and the latter more character. Skip the auto gearbox – it’s a single-clutch automated manual that feels so antiquated it’s actually funny.
Like the car it replaces, the new i10 is a weirdly mature little thing. It’s comfortable at any speed, quiet and stable on the motorway and has well-weighted, inoffensive steering. We’d quite happily do a long-ish journey in it, no word of a lie. It’s even quite good fun – as you chase momentum and wring the engines out to their respective redlines just to keep pace with traffic. Responsive and agile as you’d hope a city car would be, thanks to light weight, but more refined than you’d expect.
There’s loads of tech – most versions get an eight-inch touchscreen with CarPlay, and all get lane-keeping, high-beam and hill-start assist. Prices kick off at around £12,500 – about £3,500 less than the cheapest superminis, such as the Ford Fiesta, and no doubt Hyundai will lease you one for peanuts. As far as small, cheap, relatively simple cars go, it’s really very good.