Hyundai's N Line is Fun, Fast, and Wallet Friendly

Hyundai is quickly changing the impression of their cars from transportation to spicy since the introduction of their N Line variants. The Korean company was kind enough to invite me to try some of them out at the daunting Atlanta Motorsports Park which contains a Formula One designer's layout of a two-mile, 16-turn road course with elevation changes of 98 feet. There was also an autocross to test our skills. Your reporter is a little embarrassed to admit that the track was several levels above my high-performance skills but not the Elantra N Line's that was provided to me.

If you haven't heard of this series of Hyundais, here's a little explainer. The main Elantra starts off with a front wheel drive, 2.0-liter, gasoline-powered 4-cylinder engine producing 147 hp. The N Line upgrades you to a turbocharged 1.6 liter engine producing 201 hp in the same basic package with stiffened suspension, better brakes, and upgraded looks. For the real serious, perhaps weekend, racers the N model pumps out in the vicinity of 280 hp. Other styling and performance differences include a large N wing on the trunk of the car special grille and 19-inch alloy wheels. In other words, it's a kissing cousin to the IMSA TCR Series version. Despite all of my years as a motorsports writer, nothing quite prepared me for the road course part of the day. I'm sure that I left plenty of performance of my N Line back in the pits. Like I said, this Elantra could handle the track even if I couldn't.

Next up was the autocross where I drove an Elantra, a Kona, and a Veloster. An autocross is a small road circuit, usually set up in a flat area, marked by traffic cones for track limits. It's test of relatively-slow speed precision skills. Pardon the pun and repetition, but that was more my 'speed'. Scores were kept. The good news is that, after many laps, I shaved over seven seconds off my initial time of 38 seconds, down to 31 seconds. And I didn't knock over one cone. The bad news was the best drivers were running in the high 27-second bracket. To get down to that time, one has to have plenty of high-performance experience which yours truly is lacking.

Since we've covered the fun and fast part, here's the wallet-friendly part. The basic Elantra starts at just below $20,000. The N Line (the sweet spot for me) starts at $25,400, and the N's will set you back starting at around $32,000 and you'll still get approximately 31 mpg for careful highway driving.

If you want to learn all the different specs, point your browser to Hyundai.