Hyundai i20 N review: the car that rekindled my love of driving

I was starting to fall out of love with driving; who could have imagined Hyundai would remind me what fun the road can be?

Fun: the Hyundai i20 N

Every time I do a new TV program I’m contractually expected to tell my followers about it on social media. And to help I’m usually sent a short clip that can be attached to my pithy message of self-promotion.

Except it can’t be attached. Not by me at any rate. This means I have to call the eight-year-olds in the broadcaster’s marketing department and ask for help. And I then start to understand how my dad felt, back in the ’70s, when he decided to buy a stereo. The salesman taunted him by asking how many watts he wanted and then laughed when he said, “Two”. The eight-year-olds I deal with steadfastly refuse to believe that I don’t know what a “tag” is, or a “link”, and no, I don’t have a clue how I might put either of these things in my “bio” because I don’t know what that is either.

All of this means I was completely at sea when I first climbed into the Hyundai i30 N (big brother to the i20 N, pictured) and tried to go to London, because you use an iPad-type screen to tailor every aspect of the car to your precise requirements. You can choose what the dash looks like and how you want the suspension to feel and what sort of noise you’d like the exhaust to make. On and on it all went, with me peering over my reading glasses and stabbing away in a fit of despair. Not at the car; at my own elderliness.

But in every other respect this Golf-sized hot hatchback was an utter delight. The speed of it is perfectly judged. It has a proper handbrake, not a button. The driving position is spot-on. The quality is tangible and the stereo is epic. Sure, the new automatic gearbox gets a bit hunty in “Sport” mode and the ride is stupid in the “Nürburgring” setting, but if you leave everything in “Normal” life is anything but. I’ve never driven a better front-wheel drive car. Not ever.

At some point in the past year or so I’d started to sense I was falling a bit out of love with driving; that it was becoming a chore. Who could have imagined it would take a five-door Korean hatchback to remind me what fun the road can be? I really loved this car.

In a funny sort of way, though, I love its little brother even more – even though the i20 N really isn’t aimed at me. It’s small and buzzy and so firm that you don’t drive down the road in it, you bounce. It’s Tigger with windscreen wipers. There are two large, pale blue buttons in the centre of the steering wheel and I have absolutely no idea what either of them do, but when you push the one on the right the whole instrument binnacle is consumed by digital flames. Some would call it childish, but the i20 N isn’t aimed at them either.

Back in the early ’80s I used to drink at the White Horse in Fulham and, every evening, all the other twentysomethings would arrive in their Alfas, GTIs, hot Renaults and Beemers. It wasn’t that they were especially interested in cars, but this was a time before insurance became an issue and only Mrs Thatcher had ever mentioned global warming. So they all had something a bit tasty. It’s just what you did.

Obviously all that’s changed today. For many years my own son chose not to drive at all, saying the bus was better as he could use it while drunk and it had wi-fi. And then there’s the woke army who have it in their heads that cars are somehow misogynistic and it’s the cyclists who are right. And don’t you dare argue or you’ll end up on YouTube having dog dirt pushed through your letterbox.

There must still be a number of young kids who love cars, though. And if there are, they’d struggle to find anything better than the little i20 N. They would have a ball. It’s one of those cars that turns into any corner at any speed you like, and whizzes from place to place in a frenzy of histrionics and fizz.

The shame, of course, is that to reach the target audience for this car, I’d have to attach a link to this column from my Twitter account. And I don’t know how to do that. So they’ll never know. Pity.

HYUNDAI i20 N

ENGINE: 1.6-litre turbo four-cylinder petrol (150kW / 275Nm). Average fuel 7 litres per 100km

TRANSMISSION: Six-speed manual four-wheel drive

PRICE: $32,490

STARS: ★★★★