Road test review: Hyundai i20

Wednesday, 15 July 2020

• HYUNDAI i20

• Base price: $26,990

• Powertrain and economy: 1.4-litre petrol four, 74kW/134Nm, 4-speed automatic, FWD, combined economy 6.4L/100km, CO2 147g/km (source: RightCar).

• Vital statistics: 4035mm long, 1734mm wide, 1474mm high, 2570mm wheelbase, luggage capacity 301 litres, 15-inch alloy wheels.

• We like: Handsome, comfortable and spacious, excellent ride, well-equipped.

• We don't like: Breathless engine, truly dismal four-speed auto.

While SUVs large and small dominate our new car sales charts, the compact city car segment is still a popular one with private buyers. With some truly excellent cars like the Volkswagen Polo, Mazda2 and Suzuki Swift starting at well under the $30k mark, it is also a very competitive segment. Which is a problem for Hyundai’s i20…

Oooh dear… so that means it’s not so good then?

Well, it actually is a nice thing – it’s quite a handsome little beast, has heaps of space inside, is well-equipped and has an exceptionally good ride for something in its segment.

It is nicely put together out of relatively good quality materials (although lots of plastic is expected in this part of the market, and the i20 doesn’t do anything above and beyond here) and it is a nicely agreeable handler that doesn’t bite or surprise in any way and has accurate and responsive steering

So far, so good then, even in the competitive segment it plays in. But it has a big problem. Or, rather, two big problems in the form of its engine and transmission.

While the rest of the i20 is easily up with the rest in the $25 to $30K compact car segment, the engine and transmission hail from the absolute depths the bargain-basement.

The engine is a wheezy 1.4-litre four-cylinder petrol engine that can trace its roots back to 2008 (although it has had a number of updates since then) that produces 74kW of power and 134Nm of torque.

While it isn’t terrible as such, the engine does quickly run out of breath up in the revs and lacks torque under its 3,500rpm peak, which plays tragically into the biggest problem the i20 faces – the thoroughly awful four-speed automatic transmission.

Wait – did you say it has a four-speed auto? In 2020? Really?!

Yeah, you read that right. And it is a particularly crappy one too.

Most of the engine’s annoying features could be easily sidestepped if it had a decent transmission, but the four-speeder doesn’t even approach decent.

Quite aside from its obviously low ratio count, it is also dismally slow to react and reluctant to downshift, and, as a result, boasts an uncanny ability to be in exactly the wrong gear at any given time.

To add insult to injury, the fact that you need to virtually give it full throttle to get it to downshift – lest you be dithering painfully slowly along in far too high a gear – means that fuel consumption is WAY higher than it should be…

Any other cars I should consider?

Literally anything else in the segment.

The most obvious being the Rio from Hyundai’s sister-company Kia – the $25,990 top-spec Rio GT-Line sits on the same platform as the i20 but gets a far more modern and usable 88kW/170Nm 1.0-litre three-cylinder turbo engine hooked up to a six-speed dual-clutch shifter. Although, to be fair, the six-speeder has its own issues, just not as many as the four…

This engine/transmission combo is what the i20 should get – and, indeed, does in overseas markets – just not here in NZ. Not sure why.

At $25,990 a manual 70kW/175Nm Volkswagen Polo is less than the i20 and a way nicer thing to drive, with a seven-speed DSG version a few grand more at $28,490, while the Mazda2 is auto-only and starts at $28,095.

Of course, the default choice for the money in this segment is the perennial favourite Suzuki Swift, and when you consider you can buy the excellent 82kW/160Nm Swift RS auto for $1,000 less, the i20 offers up no discernable argument against that…