Hello everyone, today I’m out in Sonoma, California with two of Hyundai’s newest performance vehicles.
Over here in performance periwinkle, we have the new elantra, but we’re going to be talking about this very red car right here, the all new kona n if you want to learn more about my periwinkle partner, be sure to hit that subscribe button down at the bottom of your screen because this Article is on the channel live at the moment.
Now that we don’t know what 2023 will bring, I wouldn’t be surprised if the veloster end was phased out in favor of the kona n.
It’s not as raw or visceral as the veloster n, but it fits a lot of the performance philosophies that Hyundai constantly touts.
This is a daily driver livable vehicle that’s also a lot of fun on autocross.
One thing I’ve always found odd about the Kona end is that this little area up here is not a vent at all.
Personally, I think it would have been a slightly cleaner look if that had just been limited.
Let me know what you think about that down there in the comment section.
In case you’re wondering, the rest of the end lineup has red accents all around the body but those red accents disappear if you get the red paint job.
It’s a little bit lighter, but it’s also a little bit longer, and it has more combined legroom, but Hyundai was very clear that they wanted something a little bit different with the Kona n they wanted cargo practicality, so this has the same hatch as the regular Kona model, but it also has roof rails, and instead of slamming the kona end all the way to the ground and making essentially a five-door version of the veloster, they chose to There’s a distinctive spoiler on top and a triangular brake light in the middle, but as you’d expect, there are a lot of shared components with the rest of the cone to line up tail lamp modules turn signal modules those are basically the same and the hatch design is generally the same as the regular kona as well.
No performance vehicle would be complete without upgraded tires and brakes, so we have those on the cone and also unique wrangler wrangler wrangler wrangler Importantly, these are not brembo brakes because Hyundai stated that they wanted to use a similar design to other Hyundai vehicles to help reduce costs not only for you to buy the kona n but also for you to maintain the kona n so after market it’ll be easier to find brake components and it’ll be less expensive if you need to replace things like calipers or brake pads in the future the rotor design is a fairly large just over 14 inch rotor up front and we opted for Because this car has a dual clutch gearbox, the overboost mode is standard on the Kona.
The 8-speed dct is the same 8-speed dual clutch transmission found in the veloster and elantra.
It’s a little bit different from Hyundai’s other eight-speed dual clutch transmissions because it has a much more aggressive starting ratio and more aggressive ratios in general.
It’s also tuned to shift faster and a little bit harsher than the rest of the lineup to give you the most brutal acceleration possible.
If you’re looking for a more comfortable driver’s seat, keep the Kona n on your shopping list because it has a different design power driver seat than the veloster end or the elantra n where those seats are actually quite similar.
The power seat in this model is heavier than the seat in the elantra end or the veloster end, which increases the curve weight of the cone end but personally I think that’s a small price to pay for a more comfortable driver’ On the other hand, because the Kona is a subcompact vehicle, we have significantly less legroom than the elantra, but we do have a bit more headroom.
If I put my head all the way back there to the headrest, I still have about an inch of headroom left, plenty of room even if I sit in this middle seat.
On the other hand, if I had this passenger seat all the way back in its tracks, I couldn’t sit behind it.
Because this is a subcompact crossover, you can expect to see more hard plastics here than you would in a Hyundai Tucson.
Moving on to the dashboard, the design is quite similar to the rest of the Kona series.
The dashboard design for 2022 is much the same as the rest of the Kona series, with some hard plastics up above on the dashboard and soft plastics right here in the center with an unique feel.
We have Hyundai’s touchscreen infotainment system here in the middle of the dashboard with obviously some end mode changes let’s go take a look at those right now we have this home screen for the end mode with lots of different pop out options so I can click the throttle option and get a gauge readout right there like that I can click this option out and make it bigger on the sc We have a lot of circuit information circuits are programmed into the system, so for example, if you want to do lime rock park homestead miami speedway atlanta motorsports park, and so on.
Of course, one thing interesting about this is that I’m at Sonoma Raceway right now with Hyundai, and Sonoma Raceway is not one of the tracks on there.
We also have a brake press read out there, so you can see how much brake force you’re giving the second end Toggle on launch control using this button.
You can collapse things over there on the right side if you want.
If we go into performance settings, there are a lot of additional things that can be altered.
For example, you can tweak the way launch control operates and the rpm right there.
The choice of whether or not to have the shift light on and power shift is an intriguing one.
If we turn this on, it will not basically blip throttle a little bit between gear changes, which improves acceleration but sacrifices a little bit in the sound and track sense shift, which detects when you’re on a track and engages the appropriate program.
We can also turn off automatic creep, which allows the dual clutch transmission to imitate an automatic transmission and can be enabled or disabled.
There are controls for the single zone automatic climate control system, USB input, and a wireless charging mat right there, as well as the distinctive end shifter that’s basically the same as the elantra’s with the drive mode selector over there on the left side.
There are also two decently sized cup holders and a hand brake, which is a nice touch.
Inside on the driver’s side we have an adjustable lcd instrument cluster the design of which will change either based on the drive mode or based on your selection in the infotainment system this is approximately 10 and a quarter inches large so it’s a little bit smaller than some of the lcd instrument clusters that we find out there and it’s nestled into a binacle that’s a little bit different from the elantra as well pretty deep storage area right there If you get the dual clutch transmission, you get this ngs button, which stands for n grin shift and adjusts the way the transmission and engine behave to give you the best acceleration.
If you get the manual transmission, that turns into a rev matching enable disable button.
Now let’s get the Kona n out on the road when you’re not using launch control.
The kona n is only available with an eight-speed wet dual-clutch gearbox, so if you want a six-speed manual, you’ll have to go with the veloster or the new elantra.
This will be a dct-only vehicle, and to be perfectly honest, most people who buy a high-performance vehicle will get the dct because it will get you from zero to sixty miles per hour faster, and this transmission is absolutely fantastic; it is just as good as the 7-speed dual clutch transmission found in modern Volkswagen and Audi front-wheel-drive vehicles.
this is really really good out on the road it’s smooth it’s easy to drive and out on a track it’s even better but i’ll get to that at the end of this drive section the mission with the kona n was to make this the most livable version of the end product line so far this is tuned perhaps a little bit softer just a hair softer than we find in the veloster end now obviously you can firm things up if I toggle the style over here to sport or if I use the custom modes to engage sport plus for the suspension things are definitely firmer the engine exhaust note is more raucous etc but if I move this control over to eco or normal this is very daily driver livable and that’s also something that we see in volkswagen’s gti and the golf r the 8-speed dual clutch transmission has a lot to do with the drivability and livability of the kona n this wet dual clutch transmission feels less like a manual transmission than the dry clutch transmissions that hyundai has used in the past since the clutches inside this transmission are swimming in an oil bath it’s easier for the transmission to slip the clutches and give you a more automatic transmission like start but there’s still times that this transmission will feel like a manual transmission most notably when you’re engaging the paddle shifters the shifts are very rapid you’ll also really notice that when you’ve engaged the sportier modes like the end grin shift mode because the shifts are very quick and they’re very very abrupt hyundai says that one of their missions with the end grin shift function was not to make the vehicle sound the best but to give you better performance so in end grin shift mode the shifts are going to be even faster than normal apparently in regular drive modes hyundai was a little bit more focused on some of the extra more visceral components of driving rather than simply speed so if you’re in the regular drive modes the throttle is going to lift off ever so slightly between shifts to give you that distinctive pop and burble out the back but if you’re in end grin shift mode not only do we have the over boost function but it also reduces that a little bit so that we throttle is on a little bit higher and a little bit longer in the shift that way gives you the best acceleration possible rather unfortunately I don’t have my testing equipment with me and I am of course not at home even though I am close to home so I don’t have officials zero to 60 times for this or 60 to zero stopping scores but according to hyundai this should go zero to 60 in 5.2 seconds just a little bit slower than the elantra end because this is just a tad heavier I do have nice features like this power driver seat with the two-way adjustable lumbar support that’s something that I really appreciate and probably one of the reasons that I might get this over the elantra n but enough with the on-road talking let’s talk about how this behaves on a track and more importantly on an autocross course unfortunately on this racetrack the windows have to be down up front according to the rules so let’s do a voiceover as with the elantra end that I was also driving the same day as the kona n i’m not entirely clear that sonoma raceway is the right kind of track for the kona end because it is a little on the large side and versus 400 500 horsepower sports cars the kona n and the elantra end can feel ever so slightly out of breath but where this really shines is the autocross although I don’t have too many shots of the kona n on the autocross course I did end up spending most of my time behind the wheel on the autocross course because it is so much fun obviously the first thing you’re going to notice is that it is front heavy and front-wheel drive but the same thing can be said of most of the performance options in this price category whether we’re talking about a golf r or a golf gti or the upcoming honda civic type r the fact that we can talk about a subcompact crossover in the same sentence as those other options should really tell you something about how the kona n performs hyundai’s decision to not lower the vehicle again this has about the same kind of ground clearance as we find in the regular kona and hyundai’s decision to not delete some of the more luxury features that you find on the inside like the electric power driver seat etc means that it does feel a little bit heavier and a little bit top heavier I guess you could say versus the elantra end this also is a slightly older generation hyundai platform and the elantra n is riding on the latest compact platform from hyundai so if you were hoping the kona n would feel like an elantra n or a veloster n on an autocross course or out on the track you may be a teeny bit disappointed instead hyundai was going after something just a little bit different they were trying to make this the most fun you could have in a sub-compact crossover or a sub-compact hatch again whatever you want to call this whatever you want to cross-shop this I admit to being a little bit sad about the lack of all-wheel drive in the kona n but it is a pretty rational decision from hyundai in order to help keep costs low and make this as fun as possible now the torque vectoring front axle really is an interesting twist with the kona n once you get used to it and once you’re willing to just dig deeper into the throttle you will really really notice it on the autocross course because if you’re digging into a corner and you’re just on the brakes you could end up plowing through the cones but if you’re willing to let your foot off the brake pedal and just put it on the gas pedal instead especially if you downshift then you’ll be rewarded by the front tires really scrabbling around the corner pulling you through the corner faster than you thought it could The active front differential is a really unique feature of the Kona n, and it makes the vehicle feel a lot more engaging and capable in some of these performance maneuvers, especially when compared to some of the competition that simply has a traditional limited slip differential up front.
It won’t have the same torque vectoring ability or the ability to claw you around a corner that the kona n does, but the kona n does have a sligh If you want the most raw, visceral option, stick with the veloster end, if you want something a little more comfortable, perhaps a little more practical, stick with the kona end, and if you want a family-friendly middle option with four doors and a big back seat, stick with the new elantra n in the meantime, be sure to find me on Facebook.com.
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I’ll see you all next week.