Hyundai's little diesel delight

Hyundai will face interesting times over the coming months as Toyota leads the Japanese into the diesel segment of the new passenger-car market. It's a niche that Hyundai has performed strongly in over recent years, carving out a solid foothold alongside the Europeans that have been playing the diesel game for a decade or more.

Toyota is leading off this month with a diesel Corolla range, which will pitch in as a direct rival to the Hyundai i30 CRDi that is the subject of this test. It is just as well for Hyundai, then, that the i30 is - when judged against top-in-class standards - the Korean company's best vehicle yet.

Starting with the outside, it is possessed of cohesive good looks that are distinctive yet not too quirky. Visual parallels have been drawn with BMW's 1-series, in part because both vehicles use a sloping rear roofline to create a coupe-like look.


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