The Fastest Front Wheel Drive Hothatch has emerged.
The recipe for a hot hatch is quite simple. Take a standard economy hatchback, fit a larger engine, revise the chassis, add some letters to end of the name and finally, profit. Today there’s a host of front wheel drive hatchbacks that’ve taken this simple formula to the extreme.
Nowadays 300 horsepower is not all that impressive in a hot hatch. Consider the fact that Honda’s Civic Type-R produces 16 more horses that the original NSX, 306 compared the 3.2L NSX’s 290hp.
Then there’s Hyundai’s i30N which is the company’s first true hot hatch and its supposedly awesome! I say supposedly because i’m and American part of a culture deemed unworthy for the hyundai i30N. But that is ok we get the Shelby GT350 to dry our tears.
Continuing on my American roots I am unfamiliar with the other vehicles in this test because they aren’t allowed to cross the pond and grace our streets with turbocharged hot hatch grit. The only GTI I know is a VW and a CUPRA is just a misspelling for a cup.
Read more posts by Chris Okula in Shifting Lanes on DriveTribe the new website by Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May.
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