Here’s the latest sighting of the first fruit of Hyundai’s new N division performance arm: an upcoming hot hatch variant of the i30, spied testing near the company’s European test centre at the Nurburgring.
It’s the section of the company that concentrates on the development of higher-performance road car variants, and it has close links to Hyundai’s motorsport activities. In the performance car alphabet, think of N as being to Hyundai what M is to BMW, or AMG is to Mercedes.
In something of a coup, Hyundai signed engineer Albert Biermann, previously vice president of engineering at BMW’s M Division, to head up the N division’s road car development from late 2014. While he’s been involved with Hyundai’s World Rally programme initially, his ultimate job is to get stuck into a range of performance cars. This i30-based performance hatch will be the first to reach the market.
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