Hyundai N model updates: Australian stock coming soon
Hyundai Australia has announced new i20 & i30 N are not only updated for 2024 but will be in supply - more or less. Plus outrageous electric IONIQ 5 N and Kona N will be here, at some stage in the near future…
A bunch of new Hyundai N models are coming to Australia - hooray.
But for anybody who’s been hanging out for an i30 or i20 N since about this time in 2022, there is still a catch.
Scroll down to the second half for updates on the Kona N and Ioniq 5 N electric vehicle/s >> (That’s right, plural.)
Hyundai Australia has just reopened the order books in Australia for the i20 N and i30 N hot hatches, but don't be fronting up at the dealership with a large duffel bag of cash expecting to snag one in a heated moment of passion.
Sorry to say it's still going to take you 6 months to get your car. If you want the i30 sedan N (download the brochure here >>), I think it's more or less available now, but you'd really want to wait until early 2024 for that one because you want the upgrades.
N car availability has been officially upgraded to ‘slightly less shit’, so essentially, if you front at the dealer with that deposit and you ask very nicely, they will actually order the car for you now. Previously the order books have been closed for about a year.
Hyundai will make the vehicle in probably the next month or so, and then it's going to take about 4 months to get down here on a ship, provided the ship doesn't go all Freemantle Highway en route >>.
The i20 N is probably the car I'd buy when I think about it, because it’s a bit more analogue, a bit more accessible. That's made in Turkey while the i30 N, which is faster and a bit more refined, comes out of the Czech Republic - and it’s not exactly straightforward shipping to Australia from either location due to so much of planet Earth being in the way.
You can check out my Part 1 buyer’s guide and track test on the Hyundai i20 N here >> and Part 2 pre-production unlimited lap i20 N track test here >>
Or my original i30 N in-depth review and track thrash here >> (The one where I declared the death of the Golf GTI.)
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Hyundai in electric blue
to complete the tapestry of so-called enthusiasm, what's going to happened to the Nona n, you might be asking.
Well, in addition to being a proper genetic freak, the Kona N is also a great ball of fun. Officially, following the launch of the new Kona, an N version is being tantalizingly prick-teased under the rubric of:
it's under consideration
Translation, they’re ‘thinking about it’, which in motoring media terms means it’s already officially happening. I'm tipping if they do one, and they will, it's going to be electric only. So watch this space.
Speaking of genetic freaks, the electric abomination known as the Ioniq 5 N is also out of the blocks, or at least it will be here in Australia on September the 22nd to 24th at the southern insufferable twat convention, also known as the Melbourne EV Show.
Ioniq 5 N is just $75,000 more than an i30 N - and only $40,000 more than an Ioniq 5 Epiq - thanks in part to 6.4 kilowatt-hours more battery than the Epiq. Total of 84 kilowatt-hours.
So this is a vehicle that weighs roughly as much as a Toyota Hilux ‘Rogue’ dual cab 4x4 and with a wheelbase to match - it's freaking huge - and the same power as a $600,000 Ferrari 296 GTB (auto). What could possibly go wrong putting 478 kilowatts into a 2.1-tonne vehicle that needs four 11-inch wide Pirelli P Zero tyres to have any vestigial hope of remaining on the road, and brakes to match?
Given that copper, nickel, lithium and cobalt are in such preposterously short supply, and given that the move to EVs is being done to ‘solve a CO2 problem’, however imperfectly, I would argue that cars like this are an unrecognized form of social insult dressed up in the cloak of insufferable virtue.
Where you could have one $125,000 Hyundai Ioniq 5 EV embodying all those scarce resources, on the other hand you have 5 x 17kWh batteries that could take five houses properly off the coal-fired electricity grid and reduce dependency on coal which all but the abjectly brain-dead know is the main emissions problem here.
As for EVs, this car is almost but not quite as ridiculous as as a Kia EV9 or Polestar 2 in terms of containing enormous, resource intensive batteries that could subvert coal-derived grid-based carbon emissions into the atmosphere.
But good news, they're selling it again as if it's like some limited edition Nike Air Jordan, albeit orders of magnitude more expensive. Meaning it’s for sale in an online-only format, in limited batches in time-based windows of availability. Such is the pull of an insufferable EV fanboy magnet such as the Ioniq 5 N.
Although, I give them full points on this for engineering 0.6 Gs of regenerative braking. If it can do that at 100km/h, the regen brakes are going to be generating 350kW of regenerative braking power - that's insane (the good kind). If it can do that at 150km/h on a racetrack, that's roughly half a megaWatt of regenerative braking. That’s awesome…
Although, I do hope the tyres can keep up.
If you’re shopping for a small hatch or sedan, the Hyundai i30 has become the benchmark for value, performance and quality. Small families with a modest budget, or merely individuals who don’t need a bloated SUV, i30 offers bang for your buck.