Still not a perferct super-hatch. Review on Hyundai i20

I test drove the Hyundai i20 Asta(1.2L Petrol) last week. In fact, one of my friends wants to pick a premium hatch as his next upgrade and I am accompanying him to all test drives(and hence a few more reviews in the hatch plus segment might follow).

The packaging

In a nutshell, the Hyundai i20 Asta is nothing but the Kappa engine of i10 sitting on top of a Verna chassis(most of it, I was told) and clad in a new hatch outfit. What does this mean? You get a reasonably peppy engine with a broad stance and better stability than its smaller hatch predecessors like i20, Getz, Santro. And most importantly it comes loaded with some amound of laxury(for this class) and safety features that you cannot sometimes find in even upper C-segment cars.

The Looks

I am not a big fan of Hyundai cars - at least what they have for the Indian market. But I must say that I kind of liked the shape and stance of the i20. It's not just another plain looking hatch that you see on the Indian roads. From the sides, you can see a lot of folds and muscles and the front is awesome with a huge airdam and a lean impressive grille design flanked by huge teardrop headlamps.

The Interiors

When you enter the car as a driver, you are immediately going to feel that it's not really an ordinary vehicle as you get to see a lot of controls, the steering wheel stuffed with audio controls and airbag units, a multi information display in the center etc. However, a thorough scan would slowly disclose the cheapness of most of those features. To begin with I hated the coffee-beige combo of the plastics and fabric. It looks great in a picture but will look faded and sub-standard within pretty soon. The coffee coloured plastics are something that you won't see in many cars these days. It has to be either grey, black or total beige for classy looks. Hyundai and Maruti Suzuki understand the mindset of Indian customer. They can afford to stuff a lot of features while going slow on bigger things that matter as long as good mileage and overall pacakging is guaranteed. I would have called some of these features in i20 as luxurious if the car was priced around 5 lakhs ex-price. But when you pay more than 6L on road for the base version, I have to say, I am dissapointed. Cheapness is reflected in the fabric, the quality of controls and the multi-function display unit. This is where probably Skoda Fabia excells.

The engine and drive quality

I haven't driven a hatch for a while and having used to driving my bigger car, I thought I was going to have problems with the power of the Kappa unit. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the response of the i20's Kappa Engine which was reasonably powerful for its size. Moreover, the gear box unit and the well constructed gear ratios made the drive smooth. The gear is butter smooth though the play could have been less. For a vehicle that had done 26K kms, it was pretty good. With four people in the car including me, everything went smooth till I scrapped the first speed breaker. And that was followed by a couple more and I had to be really very careful(much more than what I used to while test driving the Honda City) not to scrap again. The biggest problem of i20 probably is its suspension which is a bit too soft, I thought, while Verna's kind of wheelbase demands a harder suspension. Ironically, the seats were quite harder unlike most Hyundai cars where they usually get stuffed with soft forms. Overall, I did not feel good when I moved to the backseat. However, the backseat space was quite good for a hatch. The problem though is that for a car that's wider than 1700 mm, the backseat inner width could have been better. Probably that is due to the enhanced passenger safety focussed build. Another good thing in the backseat is the rather flat leg area(not much protrusion in the center floor)

While cornering and on higher speeds the car was stable though not as stable as the Fabia. I liked its alloys and tire sizes which's proportionate to the car's size. However, I did not quite like is the steering wheel which had a bit too much of spring action(some kind of recoil) and tendency to level back a bit too early when left alone after turning.

Overall, the car drove well but they could have improved the steering and suspension.

Summary

The i20 is a pretty good overall package as most of its competitors fail in one or more areas as well. Basically, there's no real good allrounder in this segment yet and hence it has to be one of the reasonable choices. The following are the summary of pros and cons:

Good

Feature loaded(Electrically foldable ORVMs, Multi-display etc, Good looking alloys, ABS, Airbags etc)

Passenger head/shoulder room - excellent

Good gears and drives like a bigger car

Brakes were good and ABS effective in sandy road testing

Boot room of 295L probably near best in the class

Tilt/telescopic steering

Cooled glove box - did they blow all the cool air into that:)

Bad

Pricing(30-40K overpriced I thought)

Bad suspension(than low ground clearance)

Coffee-coloured plastics

Cheap looking multi display

Spring action on steering

A/c was not really effective

Overall, I would give this a rating of 3.5 out of 5. If they had worked on the plastic colors and suspension, I would have definitely given it a 4. For an ex-Bangalore, price of 5.6L or so, I thought it's a bit expensive unless the above problems are fixed. Instead of the 1.2L Kappa, the better thing would be to spend a lakh more and get the 1.4CRDI diesel option that can stunn even upper segment cars. The diesel unit delivers an amazing torque as per the figures and it really has some higher segment features such as dual disk-brakes etc. I doubt if it has an improved suspension, though.

One could buy the i20 1.2L Kappa for self driving fun, for daily commutes as well as for family trips/highway driving wherever less luggage needs to be carried. Be a little careful with full-loaded vehicle though. After all, though there are 5-6 options in this segment, there is no clear leader or allrounder here.