Big announcement from Hyundai in ‘Straya yesterday.
The i30 N will be $39,990 plus on-road costs - and they’re only bringing it in with what Hyundai calsl the ‘performance package’ in other markets. That’s the direct-injected turbo 2.0-litre with 202 kilowatts and 378Nm with over-boost.
This version for Oz has all conceivable hot bits - the post-apex grip monstering e-diff, electronically controlled suspension, launch control, computer controlled rev-matching for those seamless downshifts without heel-and-toeing, and N-mode (invokes everything you care about in a performance driving sense, at the tap of a button).
Official pricing & specs announcement: www.hyundai.com...
An i30 N will be $2 grand cheaper than a Volkswagen Golf GTI five-door manual. But you get 20 per cent more power and basically it’s going to monster the GTI above 4500 revs.
Is it really the Golf GTI killer? Let’s look at the balance of probabilities here, minus the emotion.
Hyundai operates a 3600 square metre test facility right next to the Nurburgring, in Europe. Hyundai Europe claims the test mules do 450-ish laps of the Nurburgring in development, which they say is equivalent to about 180,000 kilometres of ordinary motoring.
Albert Biermann (the former BMW M-guy) has already come out swinging against the GTI. It’s been quite entertaining. At the Detroit Auto Show, he said (of the GTI) (quote): “It’s a great car, but after two laps the fun is over.”
This is of course the best way to heap shit on anything. You start by damning it with faint praise and then stick a knife in its guts. But, I’d suggest, as an aficionado of sorts in this domain, if you want to be a true maestro of the verbal takedown, you should then miss no opportunity to drop punt your opponent’s testicles when he is writhing on the floor…
When asked by the press, as a follow-up, to specify what aspects of the GTI’s performance would degrade to ‘non-fun’ levels after two laps, Mr Biermann simply replied: “Everything”.
Ladies and gentlemen - respect.
Anyway, the contenders are in the ring, the seconds are out, and the bell will soon sound. The power issue is resolved - i30 N is going to hammer the standard GTI in a straight line. And it’s got the hardware to at least match the GTI in the bends. And Biermann is making big claims about track durability.
Specifically, he says you should be able to take your i30 N to a track, go really, really fast and not crash, and then drive home, without having to fit new brakes and rubber.
The fight is gunna come down to this - four-year development lead-time with the Former Boss of the M-Division at the helm, and 10,000 kilometres of R&D on the Nurburgring versus aeons of Golf GTI heritage.
It also comes down to whether Biermann is that notable flavour of German nut who flies off the reservation, making entertaining statements that are substantially disconnected from reality.
Alternatively, maybe his media grabs are in fact carefully considered and strategically delivered statements. Not just verbal takedowns but a media primer for the upcoming GTI ambush.
I’m tipping you don’t get to run the M-Division without being a strategic, political operator.
The other aspect to consider here is of course performance on one hand and how it feels on the other. The lapsed engineer in me says any Muppet can put together a powertrain with suspension and rubber and big brakes, and deliver the target performance.
This time from 0-100, this much lateral G, that distance stopping from 160-zero. Or something. That’s comparatively easy.
What’s hard is making it feel really good. In this class of car, to field a winner, everything has to feel better than bad sex. And bad sex is pretty good … except of course if you’re a chick. Or in prison.
How the i30 N feels on Australian roads and racetracks will be just as important as what it does against the stopwatch. And it’s bloody hard to make a car feel awesomely good in both places. Plenty of cars feel awesome on the road and fail to achieve the bad sex benchmark on a track.
In my mind, that’s the real battle here. The subjective experience of driving the i30 N is the place Hyundai will will lose the battle against the GTI - if in fact they lose it. Say whatever else you want about Volkswagen and its practices (and I’m certainly no fan) but the Golf GTI has been around a long time. They feel pretty good to drive.
The key question for me, right now, just before round one of the title fight is: Can Hyundai overtake Volkswagen in the domain of feeling just right on the edge? Because doing that is gunna be tough.
We’ll know definitively in just a few weeks.
22 авг 2024
