While Porsche’s lower-end sports cars, the Boxster and Cayman, were dominating the segment a few years ago, the scenery has drastically changed since then – if not in sales, but number of competitors. .



Alfa Romeo launched the 4C in 2013, and four years later, Renault Sport resurrected the Alpine brand and introduced the marvelous A110. Now, another automaker wants a piece of the piece of the pie, and it’s not Lotus, with a brand new Elise or Exige, but a company that had no sports model ties until recently: Hyundai.

Driven: 2019 Hyundai i30 Fastback N Improves On A Winning Recipe

Led by Albert Biermann, former BMW M chief, the Hyundai N division wants to take the next evolutionary step by developing a mid-engine car. The exec spoke about the project in an interview with Evo, admitting that “philosophically, there are no limits” to what they can do, and “there are no specific financial limits to what kind of cars we will make”, yet their products “need to be sensibly priced relative to whatever rivals they are in competition with”.

“If I think it’s the right time to make a mid-engined N car that can rival a Porsche, and when we think it’s the right time to make a car, we will make it. It’s that simple. Maybe the powertrain might be a bit different to a conventional Porsche’s, but philosophically, there are no limits”, he said. “We have a lot of new models, both in development and in planning. The N brand will, I believe, grow even faster over the next five years than it has over the first five. But I can’t really talk about any of those models just yet because I’m not allowed to.”

What he was willing to reconfirm is the fact that the i30 N will get an eight-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission this year, and that the i30 N Project C lightweight edition will only be made in left-hand drive and be limited to 600 cars.

The future sounds promising for the Korean company, which also enjoys a flexibility that few other automakers have, due to the fact that it’s “family-owned, and we can react and change stuff much faster than other big car companies, depending on what we want to do”, said Biermann.

Note: Hyundai N Roadster renderings shared in the Gallery