Tell It Straight

This month its all about acceleration for the i30 N.

HOT HATCHES are all about handling. Except they’re not. Straight-line acceleration might not be as high a priority for fast five-door buyers as, say, those looking at muscle cars, but drag-strip bragging rights are still valuable. Given the i30 N faced the 400m this month for the comparo you can read on page 46, it seems appropriate to dig into the numbers in a little more detail here.

Hyundai claims 0-100km/h is achievable in 6.2sec. It is, but it’s not an easy task. Like most turbo frontdrive hatches, the i30 N has traction issues, but what is unusual is that loss of traction isn’t the problem. Instead, pesky non-switchable traction control prevents the Namyang native putting its best foot, ahem, wheel forward.