Category: Superminis 
Price Range: £9,150 to £12,800
Cheap to buy and run, well-equipped, neat styling.
Noisy diesel engine, cheap-feeling dash, iffy ride.
Not as good to drive as a Fiesta, but impossible to rule out i20's superior value.
The new i20 is a vast improvement on the Getz and it should be. This car runs on an all-new platform and has been designed, engineered and developed to be a European car and it shows. Question is, is it a Fiesta beater?
Sadly we're going to have to say no, but it comes far closer to the Ford than any previous Hyundai and is far from a dynamic dunce. It isn't as grippy as the Fiesta, but the chassis is taut and you can enter corners reasonably briskly without experiencing too much understeer. There's minimal bodyroll and the standard stability control keeps things under control in slippery conditions.
The reality is, the Fiesta is much more agile, well-balanced and it grips the road better. The ride is more supple on the Ford - the Hyundai is prone to crashing over bumps.
We drove the 99bhp 1.4 petrol adopted from the i30 and the 89bhp diesel that's also a 1.4.
We'd go for the petrol. Although the diesel is substantially torquier and more flexible around town, we can't recommend it because it makes an awful racket. Strange, because the 1.6 CRDi engine on which it is based is both smooth and refined in the i30.
Although the 99bhp 1.4 is our preferred option, it's still not particularly sweet and it needs to be worked hard. Against the clock it hits the 62mph benchmark in 11.6 seconds and finally runs out of steam at 112mph. On paper, it is fractionally quicker than the Fiesta, but it doesn't feel like it.
