Hyundai plays down i30N sales

Hyundai Australia is playing down the potential volume of sales of its upcoming i30N.

motoring.com.au revealed scoop details of the new front-drive hot hatch, which will be arguably the highest-profile local Hyundai launch ever, earlier this week.

With more than 200kW, an electronically controlled mechanical limited-slip differential and a host of performance upgrades, the Korean brand’s first hot hatch is aimed squarely at the likes of the Golf GTI and Focus ST.

But local Hyundai sales boss, Scott Grant, is playing down the impact of the car – at least in terms of sales volume.

“Volume, it won't do much — that's an easy question,” Scott stated when quizzed on i30N sales.

“Where selling 37,000 i30s and I assume we will sell a similar number of the new product… So I don't think in percentage terms the N Series is going to be substantial. But it will be hugely important for a brand image point of view,” Grant stated.

More importantly, Grant says, N will bring cachet to Hyundai.

“It's more important from a branding point of view. It will also provide the opportunity to bring some new buyers to the brand that haven't considered Hyundai before, based on its [i30N] performance characteristics and credentials

“And I think it's really important because it demonstrates the company's capability to build that kind of product.

“It’s i30N today and it's other products tomorrow,” he opined.

The GTI still accounts for a significant percentage of Volkswagen’s Golf sales in Australia – in fact one of the world’s highest. Australia is also a key market for RenaultSport. But Grant says direct parallels are not valid.

“Their [Volkswagen Golf] base product and their overall range is differently positioned from ours [i30],” Grant commented.

“I'm happy to be wrong. I hope I'm sitting here in 12 month’s time saying this thing [i30N sales] is beyond our imagination.

“[But] It has so many benefits to what we are doing and to our owners and buyers and potential [buyers]… What we call ‘indifferents’ --people who haven't really considered Hyundai right now…

“It adds excitement to our staff, to dealers, to existing owners.

“It has many, many areas to contribute but I don't think pure volume is the purpose,” Grant stated.