Veloster

Over the years, I've managed to upset one or two car manufacturers with my reviews. I won't name them (as I'm not allow to) but I would imagine that a certain Chris Harris was slightly more gutted when he was banned from driving Ferrari's than I was by when I was banned from driving anything from a certain French car manufacturer for a couple of years.

With this is mind, anyone from Hyundai should probably look away now...

I've read a few reviews about this car on-line and it seems to get a bit of a mixed reaction. Some love it, some dislike it and some are stuck in the middle. Now this is very unusual as most of the time it's either one or the other with motoring journalists, but the Veloster divides opinion and I'm swaying between the middle and dislike.

Let me explain why.

Firstly, there's the look of it. I wasn't a fan of the 3 and a half door's when it was released in standard form. So it was a safe bet that strapping a couple of new bumpers and a spoiler to it wasn't going to change that. I just don't get it!
It's as if the designers tossed a coin to decide if they should build a 3 or a 5 door but only tossed twice and called it a draw.

I actually like the 3dr look. I think it suits the cars proportions really well but once you get to the 3 and a half door side, it all looks a bit disproportionate, the lines don't flow as well, meaning that it won't go down in history as a great car design...
Inside, the Veloster is well laid out and comes with Sat Nav, Climate Control, Bluetooth, Leather(ish) seats as standard. Sadly someone at Hyundai went and spoilt it by stitching "Turbo" in to the seats. Now that might have appealed to you in the 80's, but it's just tacky and not needed today.

They must have felt the need to remind people that actually had a turbo as you'd be forgiven for forgetting it did when you press the accelerator. Hyundai say that it produces 184hp! Well they must be midget horses as it feels like it's short of 40hp to me. The 0-62 time is abysmal for a car of this size and with this BHP but then that's because this car weighs the same as South Korea!

Now I'm sure that the reason I'm being so hard on this car is because I'd driven the Fiesta ST just before driving it. The 180hp ST looked great as it had 3 perfectly normal doors, was astonishingly good in the twisty stuff and most importantly felt like it had 180hp. It catapults you out of corners at the same speed Katie Price pumps out kids and divorces...
The Veloster on the other hand doesn''t. That's partly down to the fact it has monumental understeer when you push it. Seriously, you'd have more hope of hitting an apex in an oil tanker!

There will be those of you out there that will be saying that I shouldn't compare it to the Fiesta ST, and that's it's more of a rival to the Scirocco or the Peugeot RCZ, and to a point, you're right. However, rival is a very strong word as both the Scirocco and the RCZ are a million miles better at what they do for around the same sort of money, offer a diesel engine with similar performance but with the added advantage of better MPG.

For me, if you don't need the rear seats, take the RCZ 2.0HDi GT. It looks great, drives well and the boot is absolutely HUGE for a 2 door coupe.

If you need the rear seats then the Scirocco 2.0TDi 140 GT is the car to go for.

But if you want something that is fast, fun to drive but also have space in the rear for the occasional passenger and you're not really fussed about MPG, then take the Fiesta ST as it is the best value for money "hot-hatch" on the market.
The Hyundai Veloster Turbo is sadly too expensive, too slow and way out of its depth in this market to make it a viable alternative to its mainstream European rivals.

That's a massive shame as Hyundai currently make some brilliant cars. The i10 is one of the best value for money small cars on the market and the ix35 is a viable alternative to the excellent Nissan Qashqai. The reason both of these cars are so good? They kept things simple with them. They didn't try and make them in to something they're not, but with the Veloster I feel like they've tried to show the world "Look how different we can be" and, for me at least, they've just not quite pulled it off.

Thanks for reading