Hyundai N boss pans Golf GTI

The Volkswagen Golf GTI is widely regarded as one of the best all-round hot hatches ever made. It can eat up winding mountain passes on the weekend and cruise in relative comfort during the weekly commute.

But after being challenged on the firm ride of his first performance car, the upcoming i30 N, former BMW M division chief engineer and now Hyundai N performance boss Albert Biermann panned the Golf GTI as being a lightweight.

"There can be [Golf] GTIs that are suitable for the track driving, but if you take the standard GTI, it's not like that,” he said at the Detroit motor show, where Hyundai debuted its new Veloster and its first Veloster N.

“So with the N we clearly want to be more suitable for track driving, and give it more character and the most important thing – make it much more fun to drive.

"It's a great car," Biermann said of the Volkswagen Golf GTI, "but after two laps the fun is over. I mean you know [this]," he said to the table of Australian journalists.

Pressed on what parts of the car deteriorate after two laps, the straight-talking German responded "everything".

The Hyundai i30 N was developed specifically to take on the Golf GTI and has been roundly praised for its performance credentials. This website rated the i30 N very highly and, as Biermann explained, the proviso for the car was to make it a track-attack weapon.

"If you launch your first car, what character do you give to your first car? How do you go out there in the market place? What do you stand for? And for the i30 N we clearly wanted to have it closer to the track than the Golf GTI," said the German engineer.

Hyundai’s N division has revealed two vehicles thus far -- the i30 N hatch and now the Veloster N – and plans to deliver the i30 N Fastback at the 2018 Paris motor show in September. Biermann said the 202kW fastback version of the i30 N would be revealed in nine months.

The i30 N goes on sale here in two guises, including the Performance version, and should be followed by the i30 N Fastback late this year, but the Veloster N won’t be built and right-hand drive and therefore won’t come to Australia.

Asked which cars were benchmarked during the Hyundai i30 N's development, the chief engineer responded cryptically, "All of them. Or none of them."

"We looked at those cars in the beginning but then we found our own philosophy and just moved along," he said.

Nevertheless, he didn't rule out toning down the i30 N's rigid chassis, a la the Golf GTI, but cautioned that for the foreseeable future, N cars will be track-based and that means stiff suspension.

"So the substance is the key. Our N cars should survive the track driving for some time."

Given Biermann’s desire for racetrack readiness, and the fact that the Hyundai 'N' stands for Nurburgring (and the location of the Namyang R&D centre in South Korea), you’d assume Hyundai has set blistering lap times in its N cars at the Green Hell.

But you’d be wrong.

“No we never send someone out to do the fastest lap,” said the N boss. “We do durability testing and all the tunings, but nobody really cares much for lap times. I never ask for a lap time. I ask for fun.”