Hyundai i40 Tourer 2011 Review

Hyundai i40 Tourer

Built to win hearts and customers for the brand across the Euro zone, the car drops into an Australian Medium Car marketplace that has a history of boom and bust and an underlying trend towards contraction. Simply, fleet-based Camry sales aside, more buyers these days are bypassing the medium car segment or fleeing straight to premium badges for this size of car. Some of the best selling medium cars Down Under now wear BMW, Benz or Audi badges.

Hyundai says, however, the marques doing well in the segment are doing so off the back of a choice of sedan (or hatch in the case of Ford and Skoda) and wagon. Indeed, up to half of the sales of cars like Passat and Mazda 6 are wagons. Cue the arrival of the i40...

This writer is a fan of a well-designed wagon. It's not that I've got anything against compact and medium SUVs, it's just that I prefer the true sedan-like driving position (and in most cases dynamics) of a good wagon. Hyundai is banking on the fact there are more of us wagon fans out there.

Thus while the US-market-aimed i45 (nee Sonata) will continue to fly the Hyundai flag in the sedan section of the medium car marketplace, the i40 will, Hyundai contends, bring an extra touch of European flair to the wagon offer -- albeit with a Korean VIN number stamped on the chassis...

Three trim grades will be offered in Australia -- Active, Elite and Premium -- with a manual six-speed gearbox available at the base Active level only. A six-speed auto is optional on Active and standard fit on the Elite and Premium grades.

Hyundai is making much of the introduction of new-to-segment and new-to-brand technology in the i40. New-to-Hyundai features include: LED running lights, Emergency Stop Signal (auto hazard lights under heavy braking), corner brake control, speed limiter function (allied to cruise control a la Renault), an advanced Vehicle Stability Management system, electric park brake and, on Premium variants, adaptive headlamps.

The new-to-segment features are clustered towards the top of the i40 range. They are heated and ventilated driver and passenger front seats, heated rear seats and an auto windscreen de-fog function. Only the last feature is available outside of the Premium model; it also being fitted to the Elite.

Priced from $32,490 (manual, petrol), base-grade Active nonetheless arrives with a better than reasonable equipment level. In addition to a comprehensive safety package including nine airbags (See SAFETY below), standard are 16-inch alloy wheels, auto headlamps, Bluetooth telephony and streaming audio.

Cloth trim is standard, as is cruise control (with speed limiter function noted above), keyless entry and multifunction steering wheel. The rear seat is a 60:40 split fold and a simple rear luggage blind is supplied. A full-size spare is also standard.

Auto gearbox (with shift paddles) and the diesel powerplant (CRDi in Hyundai's nomenclature) are both $2000 premiums. Thus the auto, turbodiesel Active is a fairly steep $36,490. Also steep is the step from grade to grade -- $5000 to Elite and the same again to Premium. The end result is a range-topping i40 Premium CRDi kicking off at $46,490. Factor in another $450 for metallic paint...

The $5K step from Active to Elite nets you 17-inch alloys, bigger disc brakes front and rear (see MECHANICAL), dual-zone air with auto windscreen defog, rain-sensing wipers, foglamps and front and rear park assist. Inside there are decor and audio upgrades; the driver's seat is 10-way power adjustable and the entry/start system is now proximity key and push to start.

The cargo area gets a Euro-style luggage system with track tie-down points, cover and vertical luggage barrier/net. Very neat.

At Premium grade, the seat surfaces move to leather (or something approximating it) and there's a noticeable upgrade in door and other trims. It's an impressive cabin.

The front pews are also powered, heated and cooled -- driver and passenger. The driver's seat gets a memory function, while, as noted above, the rear seat also gets heating.

A panorama-style sunroof is standard on the Premium but in combination with the taller powered seat, limits front headroom for taller drivers.

Rear camera adds to visibility; the dark tinted rear Privacy glass detracts from it...

Other notable inclusions are 18-inch alloys, 'see-around-corners' adaptive headlamps and the centre stack gets a colour 4.2-inch multifunction screen. But no satnav -- that's still some months away, says Hyundai.

Hyundai says it expects the lion's share of early sales to be skewed towards the Elite and Premium variants. At these upper trim grades, the i40 is not cheap but nor does it present as a cut-price special.

Hyundai Australia is unsure whether the business case for the four-door will stack up -- particularly against its own potentially cheap and larger i45. The one chance i40 sedan has is the fact i45 is not available with a diesel powertrain.

A conventional but undeniable handsome 'two-box' wagon, the i40 shares its basic platform with the i45, though steering system, dampers and suspension calibration and some key dimensions are different.

Apologies for the hard numbers up front but they are important as they show where the car sits in comparison to its i45 stablemate and other top-selling medium wagons -- specifically Volkswagen's Passat and the Mazda6. At 4770mm, the i40 is 50mm shorter than its sibling; 5mm longer than the wagon version of the 6 and 1mm shorter than the Passat five-door. Wheelbase is a rangy 2770mm -- 25mm shorter than the i45 but 45mm longer than the Mazda and almost 60mm up on the Passat. It's little wonder when you read these dimensions from where the i40's exceptional rear legroom originates.

In terms of track and overall width the wagon is better 'planted' than its direct competitors. By way of example, the i40's track dimensions (width between the centre point of the wheels) are almost 40mm wider than Passat front and rear. The i40's clever styling might hide its dimensions but make no mistake this is on the large end of the Medium car spectrum.

Space is maximised thanks to the cab-forward theme to the i40's styling. A long rear overhang helps give the car's styling some movement says Hyundai European design chief, Thomas Burkle, but the packaging benefits are also manifest.

With the second row in place the i40's claimed 553 litres of cargo capacity is impressive, wedged between Mazda 6 (519) and Passat (603). Drop the seats and the number increases to 1719 litres. That's the smallest of the trio but only 12 litres behind the Volkwagen which is perceived by many as the hauler benchmark in the class.

The load space execution is very European in character -- right down to the Audi-style load area cover with vertical mesh luggage curtain and load restraint rails and systems that are standard on the higher-spec i40 models. Only the base Active makes do with a standard blind-style luggage cover

There's good storage throughout the cabin too. The electric park brake frees up space in the console for extra storage. Here there's a sliding segmented cover for the cupholder well. There's also extra storage areas in the base and sides of the centre stack.

Overall the cabin is impressive. It's very definitely in the mold of other Hyundai's but the execution is a step up -- even on the most recent models.

An important consideration for families is the rear seat. The good news here is that unlike some cars, smaller children shouldn't feel like they are sitting in a hole. The waistline of the i40 does not rise too aggressively towards the rear so toddlers on booster seats and tweens should still be able to see the world go by.

Adult rear passengers shouldn't have too many grizzles either. Even the centre spot on the rear bench isn't too shabby. Hyundai's resisted the temptation to over stuff the cushion to create quasi rear buckets.

Amplitude Selective Dampers (ASD) are used in the i40. Designed by German company, Sachs, ASDs change damping characteristics depending on the amount of travel the damper is subjected to. Simply, on small bumps damping is relatively weak to deliver a subtle ride. Then when the damper goes through more of its stroke, say over a big bump or in hard cornering, the ASD damper delivers more damping force for better control. Hyundai uses also ASDs on its (not for Oz) Genesis and Eqqus flagship models.

Hyundai claims the i40's damper and spring settings are unique to Australia -- the first all-new model to really benefit from the company's decision to follow compatriot Kia in developing local variants for Oz. The company dismissed UK, European and Korean domestic market suspension and electric power steering tunes and arrived at its own optimum set-up after a program of Australian testing.

Unlike the i45, the i40 gets electrically-assisted power steering. This has facilitated the tuning for local conditions. The i45's hydraulic set-up requires more significant hardware changes before Hyundai can tailor it to local tastes.

Two new engines are showcased in the i40: the 2.0-litre 'Nu' GDI petrol engine and the 1.7-litre U-II CRDi diesel engine. They're matched to the choice of Hyundai designed and built six-speed manual and automatic transmissions.

The petrol powerplant features direct-injection and is rated at 130kW at 6500 rpm with peak torque of 213Nm arriving at a relatively high 4700 revs. Dual Continuously Variable Valve Timing (D-CVVT) and a two-stage Variable Induction System (VIS) seek to boost torque delivery but in practice the engine is no stump-puller. By the same token, it's smooth and relatively economical. Hyundai claims a combined fuel economy rating of 7.5L/100km (Active; Premium and Elite 7.7L/100k) for the auto equipped version that will make up all but a handful of sales.

Though a tiddler at just 1.7-litre, the turbodiesel powerplant is the pick of the i40 mechanicals -- especially when mated to the six-speed auto transmission. Part of Hyundai's U-II engine family and featuring Common Rail Direct Injection (CRDi) technology and a variable geometry turbocharger for more responsive power delivery over a wider rev range, the 1.7 pumps out 100kW at 4000rpm. More importantly, there's an impressive 320Nm from 2000-2500rpm (and much of that peak available over a much wider rev band).

Hyundai claims a segment leading 4.7L/100km combined fuel economy for the 1.7 CRDi Active when matched to the manual box (which also allows a torque boost of 10Nm), but again we believe it'll be the auto that most will choose. So configured, the official figure is 5.6L/100km for the Active and 6.0L/100km for the 'dresser' models. With a 70-litre fuel tank theoretical range is... Plenty!

Interestingly, though available to European customers, Hyundai Australia chose to sidestep the inclusion of auto-stop start on local i40s. Look for this feature in a future update.

There is one uncommon mechanical difference betwixt the base Active model and its better equipped Elite and Premium counterparts -- brakes. As well as stepping up in wheels size from 16 to 17-inch alloys in the Active to Elite upgrade, the i40's discs are upgraded. At the pointy end, front discs grow from 300 to 320mm diameter while the rears are up from 284mm to 300. No data was supplied on the extent of caliper changes or upgrades. As performance is essential identical between trim grades, we can only assume this is a cost or weight-related upgrade.

Hyundai lists a considerable number of features under its safety notes on the i40, not least of which is a phalanx of nine airbags as standard across the i40 range. For the avoidance of doubt, that's the six bags 'normally' fitted to passenger cars, plus driver's kneebag and dual rear side (thorax) airbags. The latter are in addition to full length curtains.

In addition, i40 also gets active anti-whiplash headrests and, like a number of luxury European marques, brake lights that sense emergency brake applications and flash before also activating the hazard lights.

A speed limiter function allows drivers to set an upper limit with the figure displayed in the trip computer. The system allows the vehicle to accelerate up to the selected speed but not beyond unless the accelerator pedal is floored. If the vehicle goes beyond the set speed limit a chime sounds and a warning is displayed on the dash.

Active safety technologies include stability control and high-feature antilock brakes with corner brake control. Hyundai term the combination of these various systems, along with the i40's electric motor driven power steering, Vehicle Stabiliy Management (VSM).

According to Hyundai: "VSM enhances directional stability by applying the active safety features as needed and by providing counter steering assistance for the driver, helping the driver steer the vehicle in the correct direction. The implementation of VSM can alleviate the loss of vehicle control which can be experienced whilst applying sudden braking or rapid acceleration under asymmetric (wet/dry) road surface conditions, as well as sudden lane changes."

Hill start assist is standard and a hold function is built into the braking system which allows drivers to 'set' the brake (by depressing the pedal) when stationary in traffic. Hit the accelerator and the brake releases automatically.

The i40 has recently achieved five stars in Euro and ANCAP testing.

In the face of less-than-convincing results from the tweaked i45, the i40 is in a different space. The good news starts with the steering. While it still has the slightly artificial feel to its weighting that seems we'll need to accept as par for the course as hydraulic systems go by the wayside, it's engaging and predictable.

The extra mass of the diesel seems to settle the steering a touch more than on its petrol equivalent but there's little to grizzle about here. Keen drivers will pick a slight delay as you move the wheel from dead ahead, but this is momentary, and turn-in is then linear and prompt -- on both the 16-inch shod Active and 18-inch Premium models we drove.

The i40 gets a strong report card result too for its blend of handling and ride -- again at both trim levels. Driven at an elevated pace, the svelte wagon feels planted and sits flat -- only a touch of diagonal rocking might upset the harshest critics... And unlike some other products from the same stable (and brands that can do better) the ride suffers little.

On a quick couple of laps of Healesville's Myers and Chum Creek Roads -- favourite testing roads -- the i40 was very well behaved. Only one particularly sharp edged hole upset the drive but that was the exception rather than the rule. In tight, loop corners the car tracked true and despite the level of commitment still seemed light on its feet.

If you're really pushing on (hardly the wont of many i40 buyers, we'd suggest) you can sometimes feel the helping hand of the corner brake control and Hyundai's new Vehicle Stability Management system (which actively applies steering correction) but the level at which the stability control starts to chime in is commendably high... Much higher than any Hyundai product we've experienced to date -- testament to the i40's overall ability -- and perhaps improvements in Hankook's Ventus tyres.

Those abilities in extremis augur well for the overall performance of the car. On the Yarra Valley's main highways the ride is settled and wind and road noise very well controlled.

Indeed, the chassis overall has the potential to significantly outpaces the engines. At first drive the direct-injected petrol 2.0-litre and 1.7-litre turbodiesel present as quite accomplished and polished powerplants. They're both smooth and free revving and match well to the six-speed auto (no manuals were available at the launch) but they could lack for a touch of go.

We were two-up with essentially no luggage and on the undulating Melba Highway the petrol model was reluctant to hold sixth gear at 105km/h on the cruise control. The shift to fifth was seamless but progress with a loaded car will give the engine more of a workout.

The turbodiesel is smaller than most in this segment at 1.7-litres but seemed to cope better with the i40's mass. Overall progress is more fluid with the CRDi engine. It can be a little noisy at start-up and when you're working it hard -- in comparison with, say, Volkswagen's 2.0-litre TDI -- but frankly, it's a heap quieter than BMW's clattery four-cylinder diesel crop.

The relative merits and abilities of the engines is something we'll check when we spend more time in the cars during our seven-day tests. Suffice to say we've a slight niggle that they may both be a little light on in the torque department once families load up...

The other niggle we have in a car aimed at families is the lack of any rear camera or reversing sensors in the base model. Over-the-shoulder vision is not too bad in the i40 but a thick D-pillar does impact the overall amenity. We'd like to see Hyundai revisit the camera/sensor spec and deliver coverage across the range.

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