Hi there
So yesterday I was driving this on the full Oulton Park circuit absolutely flat out:
To be honest I was shocked, we arrived at Oulton Park thinking we had mixed the day up as there was zero official Hyundai representation on site. I sheepishly walked into the marshals office and said I am hear for a 6N test drive but I cannot find any 6N, they were like oh do not worry you are in the correct place.
In short there was an MSVT track day on and my track time was during the 1hr lunch break where I got to drive the 6N safety car on a circuit I had totally to myself, WOW!
So one lap was done with instructor, we did a Le Mans swap on the start / finish straight where I proceeded to launch control off the grid, very effective and supposedly 3.2 0-62mph, felt every bit of that. Then put the car in gears mode with everything maxed out, suspension, steering, brakes, power etc whilst in manual and engine ignition sound track.
How was it?
If your a petrol head or driving enthusiast but have found most EV's boring to drive as per myself, for example I do not find Tesla's latest Model 3 any fun at all and everything else I've driven has been a little meh apart from the Honda Super N, but admittedly that is a small slow city hatch. So if you want performance and interactivity the Hyundai 6N is easily the best EV I have driven, it is a hands down absolutely wipes the floor with anything else on market.
Now of course driving a 5N on road and a 6N on track it is hard to offer a direct comparison but Oulton Park did have a 5N safety car as well and those who driven both echoed what I felt I could feel and that is the 6N feels a more planted vehicle and less floaty, they also agreed the 6N does feel faster though power wise they are identical but the 6N has better aero and weighs close to 100kg less.
On track I drove the car in its 60% rear, 40% forward bias, around 8 hot laps and 2 warming up laps, we used 30% worth of battery and the car felt good. Yes its no Caterham because as good as the car does hide its weight in braking zones and when your accelerating past 100mph you can definitely feel your hauling and trying to stop a significant mass but at no point did the brakes fade. Though the car lacks steering feel there is some, but on track it is more the tyres that communicate by noise rather than actual steering feel which also worked just fine. As expected weak point is weight and of course you'd drain the battery pretty fast on a full on it track day and no doubt destroy tyres rather quick too.
Power is exceptional, especially coming out of tight 2nd gear corners the acceleration (650PS) is pretty immense and hits hard and instantly and the car is pulling strong and fast to 100mph.
The simulated gears and engine as per 5N are absolutely spot on, in some ways this pretend DCT gearbox is actually better than some real DCT gearboxes that is truly how good it is, massive kudos to Hyundai on this.
The cars chassis communicates well and it is playful had the rear kick out on some corners but was easily controlled and progressive, but cars inherent balance was understeer but easily managed.
Overall a superb car, I'd not buy one to do track days with, but it is certainly capable and would no doubt hang if not beat an R35 GTR on track for example and dare I say it would probably offer a similar level of fun, but those who know me will know I've never been fond of cars that weigh beyond 1500kg for track use and the closer you can get or below 1000kg is the sweet spot, though McLarens excluded as my 600 LT Spider is 1440kg and it literally blew my Lotus Exige out the water as felt like a true race car on the track but then does the road car thing better than most road cars. For me nothing beats a Caterham for fun on a track!
Still back to the 6N, if your enthusiast and EV is a must or a somewhat sensible car the 6N is bloody fantastic.
Big thanks to Hyundai having an entire full layout race track totally to myself for an hour was simply epic!
not that it's bad, it's just no N.
