The Hyundai i30 Sedan N: Putty in your hands

I once shared a car launch drive from San Francisco to Laguna Seca with an especially gung-ho motoring journalist. As we piloted our way through endlessly clogged traffic, he boasted about his forthcoming, debut trip to the Nürburgring. Where he'd be racing the notorious Green Hell – sight unseen. "Aren't you scared?" I asked. "No," he said. But when we arrived at the track, he stood in light rain and told the same thing to one of the launch's Germans, himself an international GT3 competitor. "Ah!" said, without humour. "Zat ist very interesting. I think you will die." Then he was scared. It was great. I don't know if he died at the 'Ring, but he spun at Laguna Seca's infamous corkscrew. Not a good omen.

So which is the better emotion for a new performance drive? Blythe fearlessness, or blind terror?

All of this is on my mind as my jewel-cut Fiery Red Mica Hyundai i30 Sedan N pinballs through the upper tract of the intestinally twisted northern end of Putty Road. A legendary (and, if I'm honest, intimidating) NSW road that I'm driving for the first time.

I'm here to state the case for a third option: neither. That the ideal attitude for a spontaneous weekend frolic like this one – to my mind, the best sort of automotive frolic – is C) Enthusiasm.

Find a car that eschews hairy-chested, ball-clanging seriousness for cheerful, high-performance geniality and you've got the perfect Sunday sled. This is the approach that Hyundai's brilliant N division has taken to the i30 Sedan N, the brand's first ever hot sedan. Nimble, sure-footed and endlessly eager, it gets the temperament just right.

Day-to-day – even day to track day – there may be no funner way to flex 206kW and 392Nm of old-school, stick-shifted, clutch-equipped muscle without ever puckering, panicking, or praying. With excitement levels boosted by a bright-red, wheel-mounted Rev Matching button and confidence granted by rally-inspired N Corner Carving Differential, the i30 Sedan N is unmistakably joyous.

Scared? No. We're just here to play.

Just press play

It's been another in a procession of sodden La Niña summer weekends, and most of Putty's 123km of bends are somewhere between wet and awash. At least the weather has reduced the number of fellow Sunday drivers, although the dedicated lateral G aficionados are still here in numbers.

Speed-mad motorcyclists riding solo or in groups of two. Capital-S 'Serious' performance sedans. Track-day regulars. Wondrously few to no caravans. Putty Road is a sort of paradise. One with a history.

While our i30 Sedan N doesn't need to risk licence points to crack a smile – it's genuinely thrilling at legal speeds – this ribbon of tarmacadam has been an outlaw's remit since day one. It was initially a back route between Sydney and the Hunter Valley for stock thieves. Alternately narrow and winding, it remains a rollicking collection of corners and hills, often closed in from one side by rock walls ideally suited to echoing the snap and crackle of overrun.

The northernmost 25 kilometres are dappled by dense, canopy-filtered light as the roadway traces the zigs and zags of the adjacent Parsons Creek. The surface resists drying, but our stated 5.8 second 0-100km/h time feels about right. Midrange torque kicks like a bull.

At least the blacktop here – as in most of the remainder of Putty – is as smooth as butter. The only real issue is other speed fiends, because turnarounds are few. Stomp those 360mm performance brakes and swing around for another crack at a tasty section in the wrong spot and you're likely to mash an oncoming Kawasaki.

Once you really begin hooking in, the i30 Sedan N's later torque transfer, thanks to its N Corner Carving Differential, is remarkable. Combined with that WRC-plucked rally inspired integrated drive axle – the setup is both lighter and more rigid – its steering feel is exacting. The N division's masterpiece sedan never feels unbalanced, hoovering towards the apex as you turn. It never gets rattled, either, oozing poise in bespoke 19-inch Michelin Pilot Sport 4S boots.

Banging south in the i30 Sedan N to the now abandoned Truck Halfway Roadhouse – and its bizarre, hermaphroditic Wo-Man sculpture – is a video game-esque frolic, except with the PS5 settings dialled down from 'Hard' to 'Normal'. Unless you're threatened by a giant silver robot, zero fears need be overcome.

Rev Matching for optimised downshifts elevates the engagement factor with our six-speed manual box even further, while the overrun snap and lift-crackle-shunt rhythm of climbing through the cogs is addictive. Why do 'death or glory' when you can do 'have fun or don't bother'?

Console yourself

Putty Road irons itself out as you get closer to Richmond. Fewer tight turns, more sweeping and faster bends. Straighter spaghetti on the CarPlay display on the 10.25-inch infotainment touchscreen. In fact, proud and crisp alongside the customisable 10.25-inch digital driver's display, the aligned dash screens create a pleasingly widescreen bank of high-res tech.

The i30 Sedan N's lowered sports buckets are bolstered like a fraudster's resume, while N-branded elements demonstrate Hyundai's parental pride in its first hot sedan. The chunky, leather-appointed gear knob and thick, perfectly sized steering wheel reaffirm the engineers' performance intentions.

On later, straighter roads other elements come to the fore. Later still, SmartSense safety features, like Lane Departure Warning, and Lane Keeping Assist – which you'll have toggled off with a quick jab of the right thumb during the twisty stuff – redeem themselves.

Motorways are anathema to fun. Other drivers, fatigue, and lapses of concentration are the real things to be afraid of. Might as well activate all the get-home-safe functions. There'll be more fun to be had next weekend. The workweek may feel never ending, but at least every seventh day is a mandatory Sunday.

Ahead of my debut Putty Road drive, I spoke with another motoring writer who uses the road to sample a variety of test cars. "I have never driven Mother Putty," I said, using a term coined, I think, by Boris Mihailovic, a former Australian outlaw motorcyclist, current storied writer/reviewer, and generally scary person. Torrential rain made the phone line hiss. It was Saturday night. I told him my Laguna Seca story. "Ha!" he said. "Are you scared? What are you driving?"

"A Hyundai i30 Sedan N," I said. "I've heard they're super fun."

"Oh yes, very good," he said. "You'll have a ball. It's the Putty Road, not the Nürburgring. For a start, you don't need to worry about any bloody Germans."

The Special Australian Calibrated N TECH behind Sunday Fundays

It should come as no surprise that Hyundai's sporty, grin-inducing N-badged cars shine at their very brightest on roads like the Old Pacific Highway and Putty Road, because it was exactly for these roads that their suspension was tuned.

While the suspension hydraulics for the N cars are set globally, the suspension mapping - basically the electronics and software that make up its dynamic damping programs - were specifically tuned for our conditions, according to Tim Rodgers, Hyundai Australia's Product Development Manager.

"Those settings are bespoke to Australia and that's because the roads in Europe are very different to here, they're very smooth, while our roads are a lot harder and that can involve more body movement and more mid-corner compression, and we also have very spirited drivers, so we work hard to get that right," Rodgers explains.

"When I tune the damping, I start with 'would my Mum drive this?' And that's what we come up with for Comfort mode, and then in N mode, it's about what would I want for a road like the Old Pacific Highway or Putty Road?

"Roads like the Old Pacific and Putty… people don't toddle around on those, our drivers, and so it's about dialling the car in for those roads and those kinds of drivers, which is less common in Europe. The European settings are massively fun on a super smooth road, but we're about making sure the N cars are good on those harder, flowing Australian back roads.

"I know on one section of the Old Pacific, heading north, there are five corners in a row that really tighten on you, for example, and you don't get that in Germany, the bends are bit more consistent.

"So with all the N cars, they've done a lot of testing on those roads, definitely the Old Pacific, the Putty Road, all the way up to Cessnock, but also down south, the Royal National Park near Sydney, all the way down to Omeo in Victoria. We go everywhere."

The unique quality of our roads was also something the man behind the success of the N brand, former BMW M head honcho Albert Biermann, who became the lead engineer behind the Hyundai N performance car range, appreciated.

"Biermann is just amazing, he knows everything, his attention to detail is incredible and he personally signed off on everything in the N range, and back in 2017 he came out here and drove all our roads in what was then the prototype of the i30 N," Rodgers recalled.

"He was just amazing, I can't think of anyone else in the industry who could do what he did with the N range."

Biermann's goal, which he instilled in Rodgers and everyone else at Hyundai, was to make N about fun, "about BPM (Beats Per Minute) not just RPM".

As Rodgers puts it, making a car faster is all well and good, but at every stage the engineers were encouraged to make sure that any advances would make the car more enjoyable as well.

"Fun is what actually matters, driving fun - impressive lap times are good, but with N it's all in the search of how many grins we can generate," Rodgers enthused.

"That was the overriding product concept, every decision we take asks that question of, 'will this be more fun, will it be a cooler, more fun car to be in?'

"We wanted to make the Hyundai brand about being fun, and that's what N does for us. It's a real passion project.

"And it takes a lot of time, it's a fine balance to strike, it takes a lot of time and effort testing the cars on a lot of different roads, in a lot of different scenarios with a lot of different drivers to balance that out - maximising fun rather than outright pace.

"And we invested that time, sticking to that core mantra of being about BPM rather than RPM."

As we have seen, it was time well invested.