HYUNDAI i20N
DARE DEVIL
PERFORMANCE CAR OF THE YEAR
The i20N has conquered all that we’ve thrown at it so far, but how does it deal with the Australian outback ?
WORDS CRAIG JAMIESON
PHOTOGRAPHY ALASTAIR BROOK
Rain in the desert. It’s something that, by definition, shouldn’t happen. And yet it’s here with a vengeance, a seemingly endless supply of water heaving itself on a tiny blue car in the middle of an enormous red country. There’s more bad news: the storm has closed the only road from where we are to where we want to be. After some swearing that’s every bit as torrential as the rain, we give up and decide to go somewhere else entirely. This forms the basis of Plan B, which is immediately replaced by Plans C, D and E as we discover that every road is closed bar one: the one we arrived on, which will only take us back to where we were this morning.
And that’s enough hours and miles away that Plan F becomes Plan Eff This for a Joke. So, running low on fuel but brimming with misery, we aquaplane our way back down the only option left to us, washing red mud from the wheelarches with every splash.
The plan – Plan A, that is – was simple. We know the Hyundai i20N is terrific on the track, sublime on British B-roads and entertaining on both in a way that shames cars worth many multiples of its price. But the world is rather more diverse than the TopGear test track and the B4391. So it stands to reason that the i20N should be able to handle quite a bit more besides. Plan A was as straightforward as taking it somewhere it absolutely should not be, along roads it absolutely should not go down, and heading back to civilisation with a glut of pretty photos and purple prose.