Hyundai i40 Tourer review
by David Finlay (25 August 2011)
The Hyundai man said that the i40 represents the company's third major step forward in recent years, following the introductions of the i30 hatchback and ix35 SUV. There has certainly been nothing quite like it before. This is Hyundai's first really serious player in the market's D segment (conventionally thought of as being headed the Ford Mondeo), and the first car of that size to have been developed in Europe - specifically Germany - with European customers in mind.
A saloon version will be along shortly, but for the moment the i40 is available only in Tourer estate form. To me, it's a fine-looking car, but in some ways elegant design has been at the expense of practicality. Visibility is miserable almost wherever you look (except up, if you've chosen a more expensive model with a panoramic glass sunroof), reversing is treacherous because you can hardly see a thing (though again you can spend extra money for a reversing camera whose display is one of the best I've come across) and the windscreen pillars are so enormous that your vision is obscured not only to the right, which is sadly familiar these days, but also to the left, which is much rarer and even more unnecessary.
Hyundai really, really needs to sort this out, but at the same time there's no denying that it's made a good job of the estate aspect. The load sill is helpfully low, the tailgate opening is nicely wide, and the luggage space amounts to 553 litres when the rear seats are in place and 1719 litres when they're folded.
That puts it right up there with the famously roomy Mondeo estate, which manages 537 litres and 1728 litres respectively. And the i40 has plenty of room left over for passengers - fitting four six-footers in there would be no problem at all.
They would be reasonably comfortable on a long journey, since the i40 rides fairly well even on the 18" wheels and 45-section tyres which are fitted as standard in the upper reaches of the range. But I don't think anyone would mistake this for a luxury car, or even a premium one. The attractive interior is made of too cheap stuff for that, and the clunky gearchange on manual-transmission versions won't allow the driver to forget for a second that he or she isn't driving a Mondeo, never mind an Audi or BMW.
That being the case, you'd hope that the i40 would be priced towards the budget end of the market, and indeed it is. The cheapest model costs £18,395 and the most expensive, if you must, will set you back £25,895, though none of the three I've driven feel like they're worth more than about £22,000.
There are four engines - 133bhp 1.6-litre and 174bhp two-litre direct injection petrol units (though Hyundai doesn't expect more than about 10% of UK buyers to give either of them a moment's thought) and a 1.7-litre turbo diesel which is available in 114bhp and 134bhp forms. A six-speed manual transmission, with that cussed gearchange action, is standard with all of them, though a very nice six-speed automatic is also available with the more powerful diesel.
As for equipment, you have a choice of three trim levels called Active, Style and Premium. Within Style there's a sub-level called Blue Drive, which is the only specification other than Active which includes the ISG start/stop system and low-rolling resistance tyres. It's also available only with the 134bhp diesel engine.
This is expected to be the best-selling model in the UK thanks to its 119g/km CO2 rating. The 114bhp diesel Active is more economical, but its 113/gkm emission mean that it's in the same VED band, which - along with the reduced level of equipment - means that it isn't likely to be much more appealing to business users.
Euro NCAP has very recently awarded the i40 five stars for crash protection, and rated its whiplash protection as "good" (the highest of five ratings). The only real downside to this is that the pedestrian protection score is 43%, which will automatically downgrade the car to four stars when Euro NCAP revises its rating system in 2012.
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