Hyundai i20:BEST IN SEGMENT

The 2018 Facelifted model was purchased by a friend who lent the car to me for a week to review it, here are my impressions after driving it for about 1000km. 1. Exterior: a) front end- You're greeted with this one massive grill with two subtle looking foglight housing and very sharp curved headlight units. The Hyundai logo sits on a very thin mesh grill which smarty meeting the turn indicator. It looks very consistent and classy, the hood starts from a relatively low height making it's way up in a gentle manner. b) Side view- Side profile seems to be inspired by the European design language with very mild creases and more or less smooth out surface with a nicely sized windows and a decent looking ORVM with turn indicators. c)Rear end- I personally liked the pre facelifted tail lights, looked more classy but I guess this does the work too. The rear bumper has this black cladding with houses the rear fog light and reverse light. The overall design is good (check it yourself) Interior- I think the best way to describe it is that it's great. Feature loaded, the built quality is probably best in the class, maybe just after polo by a bit. The design looks appealing and user friendly and the choice of colours is good. The steering feels nice and chucky to hold but lacks feedback which can be a sore point but then it's not a drivers car so fulfills the purpose of comfortable city car. You get a better rear leg space than the close rivals like the Polo and Baleno (in my opinion) and the rear seats fold to almost a flat bed like surface which is very practical. Engine: The diesel engine is a 1400 cc unit which churns out about and around 90 horsepowers and 230 nm of torque. This figure seems very close to the ones from the VW Polo TDI (NOT GT) but it's totally different. Polo has a good surge of power coming in from 1.8k rpm just like the i20 but then in polo there is a very strange phenomenon. When I drove down an empty stretch of road, I pulled the engine close to the rev line, at around 3k rpm, there was a sudden lost of thrust for a moment(1-2seconds) and it gained back again. I drove another friend's car and it did the same. I'm guessing that It is because of the geometric variable turbo that Hyundai uses instead of the standard turbo. (NOT VERY SURE ABOUT THIS) the car overall felt a little under powered and I was able to get about 12kmpl in a stop and go traffic without AC and with AC the figure dropped to 10kmpl. Overall- The suspension setup is much softer to compensate indian roads which is a great thing for a car like this but then that leads to the car leaning a bit more when taking a turn at a higher speed so not very confident about stability. The engine is very refined so does not get very loud despite being a diesel engine. The car is probably the best you can get in the price bracket thanks to one of the best after sales provided by HYUNDAI. I would recommend you this car for city use where comfort and convivence trumps anything else.