Hyundai i10 ES Special Edition Car Review

Facts At A Glance
Car: Hyundai i10 ES
Prices: £7,195 - on the road
Insurance Group: 2
Emissions: 119g/km
Performance: Max Speed 94mph / 0-60mph 15.6s
Fuel Consumption: (urban) 46.3mpg / (extra urban) 64.2mpg / (combined) 56.5mpg
Safety: four airbags, ABS
Dimensions: length/width/heightmm 3565/1595/1540

HY ON VALUE

Our Rating: 7.4 / 10

Hyundai’s i10 is even better value in ES special edition guise. Steve Walker takes a look.

Value for money has always been a Hyundai i10 strongpoint but the ES special edition makes it that little bit stronger. A height adjustable driver’s seat, remote central locking and a series of styling upgrades are thrown in for 400 quid. You can’t say farer than that in this highly competent citycar.

Lots of city cars aim to be more than economical transport to combat the challenges posed by our built-up areas; they want to be cool and fashionable too. The public aren’t asked for an opinion. Manufacturers produce what they feel will hit the right notes with trendy urbanites around the globe, tell us it’s the car to be seen in around town and charge a premium for it. Hyundai’s i10 is a city car but it maintains a respectable distance from this hip end of the market, preferring to trade on quality and value rather than retro design and lively colour schemes. In ES special edition guise, it remains true to form with the value angle jacked up a couple of notches.

The i10 is the replacement for the Amica, a car that was retired from the UK market in 2003 before being brought back from the grave for a 2006 swansong. It wasn’t particularly appetising during its first stint and rather like last night’s mackerel carbonara, it hadn’t improved much the next time we saw it. The i10, however, is a thoroughly different proposition. Hyundai was at pains to remind us that its i30 family hatchback was designed and is built in Europe around European tastes. The i10 city car is targeting the top performers in its sector in a similar way, except it’s screwed together in India.

The ES edition of the i10 is only offered with the 1.1-litre engine. It’s a four-cylinder petrol unit that produces its peak power at 5,500rpm and develops maximum torque of 99Nm at 2,800rpm. These figures make similar reading to those of the 1.0-litre three-cylinder powerplant that’s used by the i10’s Toyota Aygo, Citroen C1 and Peugeot 107 rivals but where that engine has fractionally more power, the i10’s has fractionally more torque.

The car doesn’t replicate the energetic, nimble feel of the sportier city car offerings preferring instead to major on comfort. It has one of the longest wheelbases in the class and it rides with the composure of a larger vehicle on its soft suspension. It ticks all of th

The i10’s long wheelbase has been achieved by pushing the wheels right into the corners of the car so as not to increase overall length by too much. At 3,565mm long and 1,595mm wide, it’s a shape that remains usefully compact. The exterior design is appealing in an unadventurous kind of way. The city car market was once riddled with non-descript wheeled boxes whereas modern offerings tend to lay on the cheeky style as thick as possible and the i10 falls somewhere between these two stools. The gentle curves around the front end work well and the rear is a little sharper with its angles but the overall shape is neatly integrated.

The interior is the area of the i30 hatchback that most impressed observers. Not because it achieved anything particularly new or groundbreaking but because it managed to ape its leading European rivals so effectively. The i10’s cabin looks to do the same and again, the design is simple but appealing. The vibrancy and ingenuity that characterises the best small car interiors doesn’t appear to be in evidence but Hyundai looks to have concentrated on getting the fundamentals right. The safety-first approach should help maintain the brand’s steady forward momentum.

The designers have employed a dash-mounted gear-lever but it’s mounted on a bit of the dash that extends down so low that cross-cabin access isn’t really on the agenda. The rear bench is set-up to take three passengers unlike the pair of moulded seats you find in the rear of some of its rivals and the i10 is a five-door only model. Practicality should be a strongpoint.

The ES version of the i10 amounts to a good slug of additional equipment piled onto the standard Classic trim level. In its everyday guise, an i10 Classic will net you four airbags, air-conditioning, central locking and electric front windows. The ES delivers height adjustment for the driver’s seat, remote control for the central locking and a series of colour-coded insets to brighten up the cabin. The exterior is re