Hyundai Kona N almost gone

The 2023 Hyundai Kona N is just about sold out in Australia, with the final 26 unsold examples of the high-performance small SUV destined for our market set to arrive in local dealerships this week.

Essentially a high-riding Hyundai i30 N hatch, the Kona N arrived in 2021 as something of a niche offering in Australia, with no true direct rival coming to market since then.

The closest any brand has come to threatening the Kona N was Cupra with its Formentor line-up, though no current variants of the hot Spanish SUV can match the Kona for performance at its two price points (starting at $49,200).

Volkswagen arguably pulled it off with the release of the T-Roc R Grid Edition. The special-edition is priced roughly $2000 above the Kona N Premium but offers more power, torque and all-wheel drive as standard.

Faster but more subdued in its character, the T-Roc R will continue in our market for the foreseeable future, while Hyundai is yet to lock in a second-generation Kona N, having insisted for a while now that “production of an all-new, high-performance Kona N will be considered later”.

If a second-generation Kona N is given the greenlight, there are a couple of avenues Hyundai could go down in terms of the basic recipe, with perhaps the easiest one being the adoption of the upcoming N-spec 2.5-litre turbo-petrol powertrain earmarked for the next-generation i30 Sedan N.

The powertrain was confirmed for future use by none other than Hyundai N chief technical adviser Albert Biermann at last year’s N Festival, where he told carsales the brand could “still come up with some nice powerful N-cars” featuring the Sonata-derived powerplant.

Global N boss Till Wartenberg expanded on these comments by saying the performance division aims to offer the propulsion options that customers want, within the confines of industry regulations.

The other possibility is for the Kona N to eventually be reborn as an EV, given the newly-launched second-generation Kona was developed first and foremost as an electric vehicle before internal combustion was added to the mix later.

The catch here is that Hyundai reckons the current 400V architecture underpinning the new Kona Electric isn’t capable of the sort of performance and track use expected of a modern N-car.

Wartenberg said last year it’d be at least six to eight years before EV technology would be ready for N models positioned beneath (read: cheaper than) the inbound IONIQ 5 N, which will start from $111,000 plus on-roads and offer supercar-like performance.

“The company has presented its high-performance electrification vision through RN22e and N Vision 74,” a local Hyundai spokesperson told carsales, seemingly adding weight to the prospect of an electric Kona N.

If the Kona N is going electric, we might not see it until the third-generation compact SUV, based on Wartenberg’s nominated six- to eight-year timeframe.

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