Hyundai i30 Turbo: Softly, softly, catchee Audi When The Reg went for a spin in the Hyundai ix35 Fuel Cell, one of the most common reactions we got was “who knew the Koreans would be leading the field in this sort of tech!” i30_side_moors Surprisingly nice to drive, surprisingly nice to look at. The Hyundai i30 Turbo is just surprisingly nice Indeed. A decade and a half …
Yeah, Kias aren't the budget brand they once were. Kind of a shame really, as my 2010 Cee'd Eco SW is a fantastic car for the money. Nice to drive and really does do 60+ mpg.
I actually really like the look of the current Cee'd, but they are not longer a "reasonably priced car"
The same thing has happened to the other budget marques like Skoda, much more main-stream these days.
The real budget buy in Europe at the moment is Dacia. Just Mrs Cowherd just bought a Sandero as a run-around to replace the pile of shite Chevrolet (which expired at 5 years old and 29K miles). For £9.5K you get a car only a little smaller than a Golf, powered by Renault's grunty little TCE-90 engine. Sat-nav / media centre, air-con, cruise control, etc.
On the down-side, you can see where they have cut costs, hard plastic interior trim, cheap rocker switches, etc, and the design is a little dated looking. It is, however, very pleasant to drive and it is one hell of a lot of car for under £10K
Yes the older i10 in particular was excellent value for money. Learning to ignore the stupid gear change indicator so that you use the gears and engine correctly, it shifts well, cruises at 80 on the motorway without complaint and is remarkably quiet for such a small car. I think it's still the most recommended small car for under 10 grand.
I live in the lakes where overtaking opportunities are rare so sometimes you do need a vehicle that has a bit of boot. The dual carriageway sections are quite short too, so if you want to overtake SAFELY (not hoon around, the roads are also slimy and covered in gravel) then you need a car that can pick up quick (otherwise you get stuck behind tourists and slow vans) nad get past the slow vehicles. Our SMAX is an old school 2.5T, the same as the old ST before the new thirstier powershift/ecoboost engines. They are pretty decent engines and can pick up very quickly for 1.8 tons of steel (providing you are over 2500 RPM as the lag is noticeable). Ive test drove a new powershift/ecoboost and wasn't impressed, the lag was a lot more noticeable and the fuel economy no better (even though it lost a cylinder and 500cc).
Not driven anything lower than 1.8 in a long time but I'd be interested to see the power curve on this - probably more worthwhile getting a diesel for overtaking...
I guess US is poor stepchild - not even independent rear suspension (elantra gt that looks to be closest match, irs absent across all compact lineup). I guess you get what you paid for - lower $ here, but the only "important" similarities are big rims.
And just forget about 2(3) door option.
That depends. You get other kit as standard.
In Europe you get heated seats (something all of us who have a bad back would quite appreciate) only on top of the line models. Looking at the pics, I think I see the buttons (they are on the sides of the console), but not sure. The low spec i30 and i20 definitely do not have them here.
Compared to that USA AFAIK gets it across the range. Even crappy rentals have it.
There are other parts of the spec which USA gets as standard while we don't/
Never cared for heated seats. Now, having heated steering wheel option is too much to ask for (maybe once one included all the crap the automaker had on sale). The grass is always greener elsewhere but to me it seems that EU buyers are offered more logical/practical choices while US customer is easily impressed with bling and ends up with big, heavy but often primitive pontoon on 4 wheels (and 72 months of car payments).
Oh dear; I feel for you. I hope this calms your jangled nerves:
The headline is simply a pun on "Softly, softly, catchee monkey" which has nothing to do with mocking asians, and everything to do with Baden-Powell (of Boy Scouts fame) and possibly even earlier Scottish folk. It simply means "patience and steadiness will accomplish your goal".
And on that bombshell ...
Up voted for pointing out the woeful state of American small cars. Even sellers of non-American types just look at you blankly when you ask if that "fill in the blank" comes in a 3 or 5 door hatch with a six speed. If they do bother to rouse from their dream of the ever expanding pickup truck to speak to you, they'll say something like Americans don't like hatchbacks or manual transmissions. Odd, I must have been traded to another country in my sleep. Hope it has universal health care.
To compare it to a Fiesta ST and Clio RS rather than a Focus ST etc.
On a cost front I paid < £20k for my Focus ST3 with most of the trimmings (trick is to find a garage who had one the exact spec your looking for either on display or a demonstrator, and you will instantly save 20%).
First I read an article where PCM didn't mean Pulse Code Modulation.
Now here's an article about a Hyundai ix35 Fuel Cell, that doesn't mention fuel cells! I thought I was going to read about a car that had leapfrogged hybrids and sniggered at batteries.
You never got close to the rated fuel consumption because it's a turbo. This is not exclusive to Hyundai; unless you keep them off boost they all do that. Burning 40% more fuel than the quoted rating is pretty much par for the course from modern turbocharged "economy" cars.
And these days with peak torque arriving below 2k RPM, you can pretty much never keep them off boost.
It is surprisingly porky for a small hatch though, at almost 1400kg.
BMW's equivalent of the same engine is actually quite miserly. It just vents the turbo if you're not stepping on it and I've seen a 118i (very similar power to the Hyundai) return just shy of 50mpg on the motorway. Of course it's a BMW, so it does a little bit more but it is in a lower tax band!
This Hyundai has ~35% more power than the UK-spec BMW 118i
It seems that the 118i is a different beast in different markets, so the Australian market review I dug up of it is perhaps not fully representative of the UK model since it has a slightly larger engine, although the power is the same. Regardless, the Australian magazine review returned fuel consumption on a combined test cycle slightly better than this review of this Hyundai, but critically it was 70% greater than BMW's claim. As we say here, croikey.
Looks like they readjusted their model names for 2015. The old 118i is now a 120i. Everything else stays the same. The 2011-2014 118i is 170hp and 49mpg, so within spitting distance in power with the same turbocharged 1.6L. The point being that BM tunes the little engines more for economy than performance, yet the power difference is within 10% and the fuel economy I've seen in the real world considerably better. There is nothing about a turbocharged engine that makes it inherently thirsty, just that in the vast majority of cases petrol turbos are tuned for power over efficiency.
Bought a Hyundai back when I was poor.
New car lasted less than 30,000km.
Engine shat itself, even though serviced by the book.
Clutch died the day after the warranty expired! (I managed to get Hyundai to pay for parts)
I'm no boy racer.
Even the garage who serviced it asked whether I had wound the clock back.
They literally didn't believe me when I said no.
Not again.
35-41mpg for a 186hp hatch.
It's not bad really is it.?
As someone else mentioned petrol turbos are like that, pretty efficient if you keep your foot off the boost but drink like a student otherwise.
But £22k for a Korean car? Sorry nope. It'll be worth £12k as soon as you sign for it. Nice second hand buy with the long warranty. 2yr old one probably in the sweet spot.
"Hyundai's car can't quite match the absolute depth of quality of the considerably more expensive Golf GTI,"
So is it more than 30% or 8k not as good?
I30 - £22,650.00 5 year unlimited miles.
Golf - £27,500 3 year limited mileage warranty.
Adding 3 years cast iron warranty it about 2k for VW brinnging the golf to
£30k vs £22k for I30.
Give me a big lazy straight or Vee, 6 with long country road legs.
Stuff fuel econ.
Hear hear.
I prefer V8 or V12. That said, I6 tend to be rather nice and well balanced engines. On motorway, larger displacement engines are not even that bad for fuel if you can keep constant(ish) speed.
"There is no substitute for cubic inches"
Only Hyundai I've yet seen that looks like I would be tempted to consider one. But..the BHP/MPG does not seem to work out well enough for me.
I have a five year old BMW 3-Series coupe, with a 3.0 petrol engine, normally aspirated, producing a very understressed 220-230BHP, yet it will return 36-38MPG when driven like a hooligan on the motorway, and between 40-46MPG when a little more restraint is used. Of course the BMW was a £30K+ car when new, but I bought it when it was three years old for only £14K. Emissions of 160gms so very similar tax to the Hyundai.I don't know the performance figures off by heart but they are certainly a lot brisker than the Hyundai, with a top speed of at least double the national limit I'd guess.
The Ford Focus ST looks a much better buy for only slightly more cash. Yes it has slightly max power looks isn't that par for the course with hot hatches?
Hyundai's are now good looking cars, especially around the front, where many other cars are now a tarted up mess.
It will be interesting to see which manufacturer becomes first to drop the rising shoulder line, an annoying design cliche that serves no purpose other than to block rear visibility. It won't be Hyndai.
I got "upgraded' to an i30 by a hire car company in Greece. Not a turbo AFAIK, but taught me one thing - don't touch Hyundai with a barge pole. "Fur coat and no knickers" as my wife labelled it - it looks good, but had thoroughly underwhelming performance. Underpowered, it required massive down shifting to go up even gentle hills, it could not hill start or pull away quickly at corners without turning the aircon off, and the internal digital display was totally unreadable in bright sunshine (and no clues how to rectify that). Coupled to these issues it grounded on even gentle berms. It also did not have parking sensors which, combined with the less than stellar rear visibility, made manoeuvering in tight spaces a fraught and tedious process. The additon of a turbo may have solved some of these issues, but I for one would not chance it. No substitute for a real car.
I had the same experience, but with a Ford Fiesta on the Azores, those dinky 3-cylinder eco-soy-bean-latte engines always struggle with hills. 65hp in a Fiesta just doesn't cut it with any kind of elevation, even here in the Netherlands. That's just how it works out because of physics.
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