Exhilarating” is the word I’d use to sum up the Hyundai Kona N. There aren’t that many cars that cross my path that I don’t want to get out of, let alone hand back at the end of a few days. So the agony and distress I felt at saying goodbye to the Kona N was unsettling indeed. It’s just a South Korean hot compact SUV, I tell myself. It’s £35,395, for heaven’s sake. No one in the real world has much idea what a Hyundai is, or a Kona – still less what the “N” stands for. Basically, it’s Korean for “GTI”, as in Volkswagen Golf GTI, or, more recently, the less familiar “R” in the Volkswagen Golf R.
Now I can imagine that, for many, the “N” stands for “not interested”, but I feel obliged to mention that, according to Hyundai, it derives from the Namyang district in South Korea – “the birthplace of the N brand” and the location of Hyundai’s global R&D centre – along with the Nurburgring racetrack in Germany, which is home to Hyundai’s technical centre; and the “N” shape is also a representation of a classic chicane, or a tight serpentine turn in the road. As far as I can see, from a brisk run around some country lanes, “N” is for “nuts”.
