Hyundai i30 review & buyer's guide
If you're in the market for a Golf, Corolla or Mazda3, take a careful look at the Hyundai i30 - because it's raised the bar for the whole segment and has Volkswagen, Toyota and Mazda against the wall in the sales ring.
Volkswagen Group Australia boss Michael Bartsch came out swinging a couple of years ago and said, “I don’t think anyone gets up in the morning and goes, 'I’m aspiring to own a Korean car'”.
What a difference a couple of years makes. The Hyundai i30 N-Line Premium (in particular) is a very impressive car. In fact, I could aspire to own the crap out of this, every day, seven days a week and twice on Sunday.
So, as the third best-selling vehicle in Australia for October 2019, I think if you go to Mr Bartsch’s office today you’ll find him swallowing his words whole.
The rest of the range is pretty impressive too - especially the i30 N Performance hatch and Fastback.
The Range
The i30 range is so simple, even a politician would get it. You’ve got the Go and Active down the bottom and then there’s a fork in the road, and you can elect to go for the comfort models: the Elite and the Premium, on one side, or you could go the sporty route instead, with the N-Line and N-Line Premium .
i30 Go or Active
Hyundai i30 Go and Active models have a lot of very useful standard equipment that competitors costing the same lack.
Well suited to average singles, couples and young families who want basic transportation.
Go and Active models offer 2.0-litre direct injection (the latest injection tech) petrol four and a choice of six-speed manual or conventional auto transmissions - or a seven-speed dual-clutch with diesel engine.
i30 Elite or Premium
i30 Elite and Premium step up in equipment level as you go through the range. Both models get premium inclusions.
There is one engine and one transmission available: a 1.6-litre turbo-diesel with seven-speed dual-clutch auto.
The diesel delivers great low and middle rpm power and terrific economy, but you will need a regular highway run to keep the particle filter healthy.
i30 N-Line or N-Line Premium
New N-Line models have a 1.6-litre turbo petrol engine and a choice of six-speed manual or seven-speed dual-clutch auto.
This car really delivers on the 'affordable performance' front. Power delivery blows many competitors out of the water, and there's no need for expensive premium unleaded, either.
Extensive local suspension tuning means the ride and handling more than keeps up with the powertrain and the terrain.
When you start with Go or Active, you get a 2.0L GDI petrol engine with either a six-speed manual or a six-speed automatic transmission, or you can have the 1.6L diesel with seven-speed dual-clutch transmission (DCT).
If you want one of the comfort models, the Elite or the Premium, then you again have the option of the 1.6-litre turbo-diesel (with seven-speed DCT), or 2.0L petrol (with six-speed auto).
Over in 'Sportsville', with N-Line models superseding the SR badge, you can have the N-Line starting model with the six-speed manual gearbox, or the seven-speed DCT.
The N-Line Premium is seven-speed dual-clutch transmission only.
Don’t panic about the DCT, it’s really only Ford, Volkswagen and Nissan who botched their R&D. Hyundai’s DCT has for many years been behind this 1.6-litre turbo petrol engine, in particular, and the diesel as well, and it’s proven quite reliable in service so there's no cause for concern there.
Poverty, Packed?
There’s almost an unwritten law in the car industry that goes, Eleventh Commandment: The bottom of the range must be a nasty little stripped-out dungbox that only an accountant could love because he’s buying them by the score for a rental car company or a government department.
That leaves the average Aussie family car buyer out in the cold if you want basic transportation, but you don’t want a poverty pack.
But the i30 Go (at $20,990) and Active (at $22,990 drive-away) absolutely brake the mould.
Standard inclusions with i30 Go are impressive: a big fat touchscreen as standard with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, tyre pressure monitoring (still an optional extra offered by ‘premium’ European brands), five-star safety rating with seven airbags (more on this in the ANCAP i30 crash-test page >>), automatic headlights, rearview camera, full-size spare, and you can option the “SmartSense” safety pack which adds blind-spot warning, driver attention warning, forward collision avoidance (city/urban/interurban/pedestrian) and lane keeping.
Active is nothing less than astonishing, adding LED daytime running lamps and side indicators, rear parking sensors, 16-inch alloys with a full-sized spare, power-folding side mirrors, DAB+ radio, GPS satnav, a centre rear-seat armrest with cupholders and leather bits.
I’ve had poverty before and that’s not it.
If you're in the market for affordable family transport you really need to pay close attention to the features on offer from the likes of Toyota Corolla, Mazda3 and Volkswagen Golf (and here's the important bit) at the same price point.
Hyundai i30 Active
Hyundai i30 Active have an impressive list of standard features including:
8-inch satnav touchscreen
Apple CarPlay and Android Auto
Tyre pressure monitoring
Five-star safety (seven airbags)
Auto headlamps
Rear parking sensors & reverse camera
16-inch alloys (full-sized spare)
DAB+ digital radio
Cruise control
i30 vs Kona
Do you really need an SUV? Probably not. Here’s why:
The production of children should not automatically force you to buy a heavier, thirstier, more costly SUV to own and maintain than a convention car.
When you add size, you add weight, consume more fuel and the preconception that bigger equals more storage is not always true.
The numbers don’t lie: if practicality is the game, the i30 has a full house.
Hyundai Kona Highlander
$39,963 drive-away
1.6L turbo petrol
7-spd DCT (AWD)
Luggage: 361 L (rear seats up) / 1143 L (rear seats down)
Fuel usage: 6.7L/100km (combined, DCT)
Kerb weight: 1507kg
Fuel type: 91 RON unleaded
Towing: 1250kg braked
i30 N-Line Premium
$38,923 drive-away
1.6L turbo petrol
6-spd manual / 7-spd DCT
Luggage: 395 L (rear seats up) / 1301 L (rear seats down)
Fuel usage: 7.1L/100km (combined, DCT)
Kerb weight: 1436kg
Fuel type: 91 RON unleaded
Towing: 1300kg braked
i30 vs Mazda3 G25
The recently updated Mazda3 has thrown a return left-hook back at the i30, but the N-Line is still firmly on its feet. The N-Line Premium doesn’t humiliate the G25 Astina like the old SR Premium did to the SP25 Astina. But you certainly save some coin.
The N-Line powertrain in the 1.6 GDI Turbo, is so much more potent in absolute terms. It makes handful more kilowatts and a handful more newton metres.
But what’s really going here, because of the turbocharger, is the delivery of peak torque which comes on in the N-Line at 1500 rpm and it keeps coming on until 4500. So you get your 265 Nm of torque all the way between those extremes.
In the Mazda GT and G25 Astina, what you're getting is a little bit less torque but it’s not coming on-song until 4000 rpm and that just makes this car, the N-Line, incredibly potent at low and middle revs. The i30 might be slightly heavier, but makes up for it with outright performance.
This 1.6-litre turbo petrol powertrain absolutely eclipses the delivery from the G25 at all revs from 1500 rpm all the way up to 6000.
Mazda3
G25 Astina
$41,990 drive-away
2.5-litre atmo petrol
139kW @ 6000 rpm
252 Nm @ 4000 rpm
6-spd manual or 6-spd auto
Standard unleaded
Cylinder Deactivation
Luggage: 295L (rear seats up)
Fuel usage: 6.6L/100km (combined, auto)
Kerb weight: 1380kg
Fuel type: 91 RON unleaded
Towing: 1200kg braked
Tow-ball download limit: 80kg
Hyundai i30
N-Line Premium
$38,925 drive-away
1.6-litre turbo petrol
150kW @ 6000 rpm
265 Nm @ 1500-4500 rpm
7-speed dual-clutch
Standard unleaded
Luggage: 395 L (rear seats up)
Fuel usage: 7.1 L/100km (combined, DCT)
Kerb weight: 1436kg
Fuel type: 91 RON unleaded
Towing: 1300kg braked
Tow-ball download limit: 75kg
i30 vs Mercedes-Benz A-Class & Audi A3
The premium German carmakers have turned de-specifying their entry level models into an art form. The real trick here is to convince you that they are still premium.
Of course, should you wish to scale the lofty summit of Mt Humiliation, you’ll need to do that in the entry level Mercedes-Benz A-Class. This is a car that will cost you $4k more than the i30 N-Line Premium but comes with hardly any standard equipment and, of course, in the Mercedes you get 50 fewer kilowatts and 65 fewer newton metres from the same displacement turbocharged engine. It would not pull a sailor off your sister.
And everything I just wrote about the A180 is, of course, applicable to the entry level Audi A3 auto. In all it’s 1.0L 3 cylinder glory. What were they thinking?
Mercedes-Benz A180
$42,300 + on-roads
1.6-litre turbo petrol
100kW @ 5000 rpm
200Nm @ 1250-4000 rpm
7-speed dual-clutch
0-100km/h: 8.8 seconds
Premium unleaded
Basic cruise control
GPS
17-inch alloys
LED headlamps
Audi A3 Auto
$36,200 + on-roads
1.0-litre 3cyl turbo petrol
85kW @ 5000 rpm
200Nm @ 2000-3500 rpm
7-speed dual-clutch
0-100km/h: 9.9 seconds
Premium unleaded
Basic cruise control
GPS
16-inch alloys (space saver spare)
Bi-xenon headlamps
Hyundai i30 N-Line Premium
$38,925 drive-away
1.6-litre turbo petrol
150kW @ 6000 rpm
265 Nm @ 1500-4500 rpm
7-speed dual-clutch
0-100km/h: 7.5 seconds (approx)
Standard unleaded
Panorama sunroof
Electric seats
Adaptive cruise control
Proximity key
GPS
Apple CarPlay + Android Auto
18-inch alloys
LED headlamps
Ride & Handling
Here in Australia, Hyundai spends quite a bit of time and money calibrating suspension settings uniquely for our crap roads and they do a great job.
They’ve got a wizard who’s primarily in charge of the technicalities. His name is David Potter. (You know Harry Potter, right? Same thing, different wand.) A couple of other guys of note as well on the team there: Andrew Tuitahi and Hee Loong Wong.
Together, they have gone through more than 200 different calibration permutations of the dampers, (springs, bushes, whatever), for this car. More than 200 permutations. Can you imagine the complexity of just keeping track of the feedback on all of those different settings and arriving at, ultimately, the best one. It’s so much data. Anyway, they’ve done a great job. What is essentially the case here is, you’ve got three distinctly different characters.
The base model Active is quite relaxed to drive. It’s just does what you tell it to. It’s your typical family car, it does a good job in that context.
When you step up into the i30 N-Line range, you get a more advanced rear suspension set up and that car has a really lively sort of character. The ride is not excessively harsh but it’s certainly not soft either. This is a hot hatch. It’s not warm, it’s not lukewarm, it’s not tepid… it’s hot. You can get from A to B very quickly if you press on in the N-Line.
Then on the comfort side of things with the diesel engine, if you're looking at the Elite or the Premium, that’s kind of relaxed as well but a little bit taut I think than the base model Active set up so you're kind of progressing through those different characters and you can actually pick and choose the one that’s right for you and there’s a substantial difference between them.
Ergonomics
Across the board, i30 is very comfortable. I spent several hours over two days cycling myself through all the different models: the base model, Elite and Premium, plus the N-Line range. After several hours: no chiropractor required. The other thing, of course, is the ergonomic integration… very good. That central screen is extremely clear. You can split screen it to get sat nav on one side and AV Information on the others. You’ve got good phone integration with the Apple and Android integration systems. So that’s all really good news.
Powertrains
One of the other things is I really like about this range is there are no unknown quantities. The powertrains, we’ve seen them all before. The 2.0-litre GDI petrol engine in Active, it’s already in Tucson; we saw it before in the previous i30 SR (the superseded one). The 1.6-litre turbo GDI petrol: that’s been around for donkey’s years, in one form or another, as well. So there’s no nasty little surprises in the petrol range, nor is there with the diesel, the 1.6-litre turbo-diesel engine has been around for ages.
The dual-clutch transmission (DCT) is not something you need to worry about either. It’s been around for a long time and apparently it is quite robust in service as well.
Comparative fuel economy and emissions data at the Federal Government's Green Vehicle Guide >>
Criticisms
There’s no such thing as the perfect car so before you get that big fat slab of hard earned cash and slap it down on the counter of your local Hyundai dealer, you might want to think about this.
The diesel engine: Since 2016 all diesel engines had to comply with Euro 5 emissions laws in Australia, and that means they have a particle filter (DPF). The particle filter needs to be driven regularly on the highway - and that would mean driving at free-flowing highway speeds at least once a week for more than about half an hour. If you do not do this, the required regeneration of that filter will not occur and you’ll open the door to it clogging up, which is a very expensive problem in the service department.
So, if you can’t use that car like that, if you're an urbanised driver constantly stuck doing the ‘Australian Crawl’ along the freeway or struggling to make the next set of lights, the i30 Elite or Premium diesel may not be the right choice.
There’s plenty of petrol options though, you get 2.0-litre GDI engine in the Active or the 1.6-litre turbo petrol engine in N-Line and N-Line Premium.
If you have got a young driver in your life and the state that you live in, like here in NSW, has power-to-weight pre-requisites for young drivers with P1 and P2 licences, thankfully, with the N-Line and N-Line Premium, the 1.6-litre turbo petrol engine is well within the parameters of that 130kW per tonne limit for P1 and P2 drivers.
This means if you buy the N-Line or the N-Line Premium, it’s not going to be a problem for teaching a young person to drive or letting them borrow your car. (Although, not sure I’d lend my brand new i30 N-Line or N-Line Premium to any old P1 or P2 driver. Mainly because I know what I used to do to my parent’s car when they lent it to me...)
Saving Space?
If you buy an i30 Active, Elite or Premium, you will get a full-sized spare wheel and tyre. That’s something we’ve come to expect from the vast majority of new Hyundais that have been launched since the year dot in Australia.
However, if you go down the sports track and you buy an N-Line or N-Line Premium, those cars will come with a space-saver spare.
If you live in the bush or if you just drive on freeways regularly, that might be seen as a bit of a disadvantage and I certainly am not a fan of the space-saver spare tyre. The only evidence in mitigation I can give you there is that the construction of the floor above the spare wheel enclosure at the rear, is more than compatible with a full-sized spare wheel and, in fact, the floor can even be slotted in at two different levels.
So you could, hypothetically, use that as a sticking point for negotiation with your local Hyundai dealer.
You could say: ‘Mate, I know a full-size spare goes in there and I know the floor can be adjusted easily to compensate for that, so I will slap my cash down on your counter right now as long as you ante up with a full-size spare tyre.’
Sound like a plan?
Dual Clutch
Many new Hyundai i30 buyers are going to be purchasing a car with a dual clutch transmission DCT) and many of those will be owning a DCT for the first time. It’s easy to assume that you're buying another automatic because, you reach down, you take it out of ‘park’, you put it in ‘drive’. It feels like an automatic and it smells like an automatic, but you better not step in it.
By ‘step in it’, I mean, if you drive it like an automatic, that would be a mistake. Sometimes a very expensive one. It’s a mistake to inch forward under load in traffic because, unlike an automatic which has a torque converter, a dual clutch transmission relies on a centrifugal clutch mechanism, of sorts, in between the engine and the transmission. That allows disengagement when you're stopped at the lights, the engine doesn’t stall. Always good.
The biggest mistake you can make with a DCT, is to inch forward under load at very low speed. So if you're reversing routinely up a very steep complex driveway, if you’ve got a trailer on the back and you're trying to do that, or even if you're in traffic all the time and you're used to an automatic which will inch forward all day long up hill, don’t do that in the DCT. That clutch will not be receptive to that mode of use and the repair bill for having it replaced is quite high so, you’ve got to understand, to some extent, what’s 'down there' under the hood and adjust your driving style accordingly.
There’s no problem, intrinsically, with this dual clutch transmission but I’d be driving it like a dual clutch and not a standard automatic.
Wheel Life
My final gripe with i30 is a bit of a minor one. It’s the steering wheel in the Active. I know I’m being a bit of a bitch now, because that car is staggeringly well-equipped and you can’t have everything, right? (Where would you put it?)
It would be nice if they could have just walked out in product-planning land and found themselves a steering wheel that didn’t have the cheapest, cheap fake leather, or whatever, and just put that on instead because that would have been the glacé cherry of the icing on the cake of that astonishing equipment list in that variant.
Verdict
After a few brief days driving the different variants if i30, I’ve come away very impressed with the totality of the range and its broad-based appeal. Obviously, it’s not the right car for everybody but it is so right for so many potential buyers in this segment.
So if you had Volkswagen Golf on your shopping list or Mazda3 or Toyota Corolla, some of the most popular cars in the market, I’d be strongly suggesting you drive this car at exactly the same price-point and weigh it up objectively because i30 makes real sense. It’s a killer (of sorts).
Conclusion
Remember that dual-clutch transmissions are not as refined at low-speed manoeuvering as conventional auto transmissions. They are, however. Better at spirited, engaging driving. They’re designed to handle stop-start traffic - just be mindful of what gnomey-boy said earlier about inching forward under load. Don’t do that.
Diesel particle filters aren’t that hard to keep healthy, either. Take a drive every weekend for 30 minutes up the freeway. Have coffee with next to the ocean someone you’d like to see naked. (As long as you don’t need to gaffer tape them into the boot to get them there. Good safety tip.) Drive home. That’s all it takes.
Finally, I’d like to thank Hyundai for generously cycling me through the range ahead of the official debut, but at the same time I want to assure you no money changed hands, and I’m free to report what I want about the new i30.
Hyundai can like or hate what I say in this report - that’s a matter for them. You’re getting my honest opinion, and that’s what really matters - I just happen to like the new i30, a lot. It makes a lot of sense for many potential owners.
I hope this report helps you decide whether or not the new i30 is the right new car for you.
Make sure you check out Hyundai's i30 resources >> for regular updates and offers too.
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