The Hyundai i20 N Just Got Facelifted… In Australia

There are lots of reasons so many Brits emigrate to Australia. The laid-back lifestyle, the perma-sunny weather, the shared language, the wide variety of animals capable of making you die a horrible, painful death… maybe not that last one. There’s now another benefit to add to the list, though: it’s pretty much the only place left on Earth that you can still buy a new Hyundai i20 N.

In fact, Australia’s appetite for Hyundai’s brilliant baby hot hatch is such that it’s just received a facelift Down Under. Admittedly, ‘facelift’ is stretching things a little. The front bumper has been very lightly tweaked, and the grille has a new mesh pattern. Also, the badges are now matte black – game-changing, we know.

Elsewhere, there’s a new set of forged 18-inch alloys, which continue to shroud some beefy brake callipers painted – and we promise we’re not making this up – Dynamic Tomato Red.

Interior updates are similarly subtle. Redesigned Hyundai badges sit on the gearknob and wheel, there’s some new LED lighting, and the infotainment system is now capable of receiving over-the-air updates.

Everything else is unchanged. When that recipe includes a 201bhp turbocharged 1.6-litre four-banger, a six-speed manual, a mechanical limited-slip diff, a 6.2-second 0-62mph dash and a 142mph top speed, that’s no bad thing.

Set to arrive in Oz next month, the refreshed i20 N will kick off at AU$35,500 – around £18,500 at current exchange rates, which seems like ludicrously good value considering it kicked off at £26,565 when it went off sale in the UK earlier this year.

This isn’t the sort of thing we’d normally bother reporting on, but the loss of Hyundai’s wonderful hot hatches in Europe in February this year was enough of a wrench that it’s worth reminding ourselves what we’re missing. In fact, Australia is the only country where Hyundai sells its entire current range of N-badged performance cars: as well as the i20, there’s the larger i30 N hatch, also gone but not forgotten in Europe; the Elantra N saloon, which has never been sold here; and the electric Ioniq 5 N, the only one still available on our shores. Thankfully, it’s still brilliant, but we don’t half miss the petrol ones.