Someone at Hyundai is a Dajiban fan, clearly. One of the company’s most bizarre creations is the iMax N, a high-performance drifting eight-seater van. To showcase its future drivetrains, Hyundai has stuffed its electric motors into radically redeveloped Velosters to make not one, but two mid-engined, rear-wheel drive track cars in the form of the N ETCR and the RM20e. Hyundai’s prototypes often have the whiff of burnt rubber about them, brilliantly so. The Korean brand’s concepts want to show us – people who actually buy and love cars, not industry design types and futurologists – where the company is heading. Their sole purpose to boast about spurious new technology and get industry and design guys hot under their indoor scarves. Often wonderful looking, undoubtedly, but they’re usually designed to be exhibited at stale motor shows. These sorts of cars, fanciful never-going-to-make-it-to-production machines, are rarely exciting. Then we get onto Hyundai’s actual concept cars and prototypes. Both are stop-you-in-the-street stunning… a hatchback and a van. Hyundai’s van, the Staria, is equally mystifying. The Ioniq 5 might be an electric hatchback – a huge one at that – but it looks like it should be restricted to a slowly rotating turntable – it’s too futuristic to be a car you can just buy. ![]() Then there are the non-performance Hyundai models that we just can’t take our eyes off. The Kona, Veloster and i20 have all received the N treatment with much the same success as the original. The i30 N was the spark that made us all turn our heads east and pay attention to Hyundai. ![]() If it wasn’t as strong, if it was, say, like the Kia Proceed GT, then we wouldn’t be applauding it now. It’s worth the lack of profit, though, because the i30 is the foundation of the N brand. I’ve always assumed that Hyundai loses money on the i30 N given it feels so exquisitely engineered. Maybe, even at the expense of any profit. It shows how dedicated Hyundai was to making the i30 N a proper hot hatch contender. That latter point isn’t the sexiest fact, but that’s the sort of in-depth and expensive modification that rarely gets past a car company’s accountants. The entire steering system was new because the regular i30’s wasn’t rigid enough and didn’t provide sufficient feel. It gripped when you wanted it to it slipped when you didn’t. ![]() It had a limited-slip differential and a tough chassis. To me, the triangular brake light screamed Manta 400 bonnet vent.Īnd it was engineered properly. At tick-over it sounded just like a WRC car skulking around a service area. It was dripping with touches that could only have come from people who love performance cars. A sporty hatchback, but nothing that would worry a VW Golf GTI, and something that wouldn’t see where a Renaultsport product had gone.īut boy were we wrong. So we knew what to expect from this new Hyundai hot hatch. It had the basis of an incredible performer, but it was finished with a mass-market glaze – the sort that leaves a bitter aftertaste in the mouth of car lovers. This warm hatch was well balanced and peppy. ![]() You see, we’d driven Hyundai’s sister brand’s performance model, the Kia Proceed GT. It shows how little faith we had in Hyundai that I, the most junior member of staff of the magazine I was working on at the time, was sent to see its unveiling. I covered the reveal of the first N, the i30 N.
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