Hyundai sailed into the waters of hot hatches, well good luck to them. Their first hot hatch i30 N was caught performance testing in Austria on the Grossglockner High Alpine Mountain Road.
Not a lot info is obtained about this little car but praise the Lord the Paris Motor show is just around the corner where it and Hyundai’s N Concept the RN30 (the beefed up, Motorsport inspired concept) are due to make an appearance. Apparently, the N in i30 N stands for a part of a company that is concentrated on the high-performance road car versions, and it is also closely linked to Hyundai’s Motorsport activities. The N to Hyundai is supposed to stand the same as M to BMW or AMG to Mercedes.
It is going to be a lot quicker and sharper than company’s i30 Turbo that is now offered, which can be verified by the bigger brakes and calipers visible behind the alloy wheels. This is because the talk is that the 2018 Hyundai i30 N should be powered with the 2.0-liter direct injection turbo engine that is supposed to produce 180 to 195 kW meaning 240 to 260 in HP. If this proves to be right, because nothing is yet confirmed, then the i30 N might make a huge impact on the hot hatch segment and make a current king the Golf GTI shaking in its position. The GTI, as you may know, makes 217 HP in regular trim and 226 HP with the optional performance pack, which as things stand now is far less than Hyundai’s ace in the sleeve. Currently, there are many hatchbacks with a huge amount of power, take a look at Megan, Audi A3, Focus and similar, so it will be great to see how will this one stack up against those.
To make all of this happen there are some things that will have to be changed, including the aggressive body kit, updated steering, suspension, tires, high-performance gearbox, and exhaust. Some of this is already visible on the spy shots, for everything else, we will have to wait for Paris.
This all is just a short list of essentials, much more is in the prep, but according to sources that brought us these images, the i30 N has already won in one segment – it sounds far better than anything in Golf GTI department.
