NO COMPROMISE

The more for less little Hyundai

Auto Bakkie Race Legend Tests are selected from our extensive road test archive.

This road test was first published in AutoNews December 2016.

The South Koreans are a tough lot. You have to be with Rocket Man as a neighbour. Suppose that’s also gone a long way to see to it that they now make world-class cars up there.

I like surprises – cars that surprise me will always get a good write-up and so this one is pretty positive. Look, Grand i10 doesn’t promise much – saddled by a misnomer of a name is hardly a start – bigger than i10 and not quite an i20, what struck me is that Grand certainly is no compromise.

It promises little, so when you settle in and find it quite a pleasing place to drive, when it delivers better than expected performance and keeps on growing on you in many other little ways, it certainly delivers beyond expectation. That’s not lost on it sitting on this page alongside two standard bearers – not by design – it just happened that way.

But that data does not lie – Grand i10 offers pretty much what the others do, perhaps with less pretension, but it delivers more – for less, which says quite a bit for a car that isn’t quite clear on what it is in the first place… - Michele Lupini

LEGEND TEST: 2016 Hyundai Grand i10 1.25 Glide

Engine: 64kW 120Nm 1248cc petrol I4

Drive: 6-speed manual FWD

TESTED (December 2016):

0-60km/h 4.21 sec

0-100km/h: 10.11 sec

0-160km/h: 32.93 sec

400m: 17.4 sec @ 128km/h

80-120km/h: 4.58 sec

120-160km/h 17.59

CLAIMED:

Vmax: 168 km/h