

Hyundai’s point of difference compared to a number of rivals comes from its supportive parent in Korea. As we have written about extensively, Hyundai Australia (HMCA) has its very own team of engineers and testers tasked with bespoke localised tunes to make sure they're very different from their home-market cousins.






The car

We’ve since seen the new i30




The team

The leader is general manager of HMCA product engineering HeeLoong Wong, a 10-year Hyundai veteran who was once Subaru Australia’s chief engineer. It's his job to draw a line in the sand and call the project done, and to liaise with Hyundai's management, which gives the team at least some autonomy.





"Australians have more variety in a given radius. I have bits of road near my house in France like yours, but I don't have corrugated stuff near me," said Potter. "The variety of the roads is unique in Australia. Australia drives everywhere."



The process




Our experience





"It's a little firm generally, exaggerated by big body motions. Recovery time half what it needs to be".

Or he may point out that the compression side needs a rework so square-edged hits are taken more smoothly, or that the rebound force may need to be reduced so the wheel doesn't pull the body down with it.

This particular day focused on the dampers, though others might hone the spring rates, shocks, stabiliser bars, bushes, tyres, cross members... the list goes on. When Hyundai says Australian-tuned, it means precisely this.

Walls covered in racks with different springs (say, rates of 3.2 to 4.0), bars and damper rings sent here with Hyundai Global's permission attests to the size of each development program.



The mission is to make each i30 variant fit a certain brief, which for our i30 turbo hot hatch is to be dynamically adept, but comfortable enough to be a daily driver. The thinking at this stage had been to up the rear spring rate and soften the front stabiliser bar, so it 'bites' better on turn-in. And remember the Veloster-Raptor? Those dampers look familiar...



Making tiny changes to the dampers' rebound or compression sides can fundamentally alter the cars' behaviour, both due to their own characteristics, and how they interact as part of the whole suspension setup. There are few extraneous parts on a car when last we checked...




"It generates numbers and sometimes the numbers are the same, but depending on the mix and match of valves and discs and orifice holes, they can behave differently," he said, telling us of an example where he'd played with 40 iterations, where 30 looked the same on graphs but each actually behaved differently in reality.

In other words, sometimes the numbers don't match subjective feel. Numbers just help you understand how to fine tune character or feel in a car, and isolate causes rather than symptoms.


A drive with Tuitahi




The early roads told Tuitahi how well the unsprung mass was controlled. "If you're on a smooth road, with no sharp or jerky inputs, but you feel small bumps, then it's a feel of cheapness. a smoother and more refined car gives a premium feel," he said. We could not agree more.

Once we fought past roadworks (the enemy of a guy deliberately seeking bad roads), we tested body control. A steep downhill showed the initial compression to be good, with the loaded car staying off its bumps stops. But the recovery was a little too fast, because it's better to oscillate more and settle slower. Corollaries aren't unchangeable, luckily.



The next kilometre had four very different surfaces. "Some cars feel like they'll break through here," Tuitahi says, as I take the coordinates for some future test loops...


Andrew's take on this particular build, number nine tested?

"Targeting reduction in compression force over previous iterations was a good thing, the wheel moves more freely without putting input through the body. But the changes to let the wheel fall away from the body didn't work as well as hoped."


Back to the drawing board...

"It's not something all customers are able to pinpoint, identifying shake or vibrations, but when a car has quality damping and good unsprung mass control, they'll say it's a nice car, nice to drive," Tuitahi said, as Potter arrived to plug in and download key data.


Now, rinse and repeat this process time after time, coffee after coffee, meeting after meeting, cold, wet night after cold, wet night... Glamorous.


Where to now?


Update: shortly after our testing, HMCA told us it had been given permission to tune the new-gen PD i30's stability control locally. It'll happen in the coming weeks, on dirt and on track, where Tuitahi will tune it to match the suspension. He's already started the process in Namyang.


Final thoughts

When you think of Australian vehicle development, you rightly think of Ford and Holden. But don't discount Hyundai, which operates its division at a far lower scale here, but which is rolling out cars that are among the most dynamically adept in the market.

Click the Photos tab for more images by Thomas Wielecki.

Want more Ask CarAdvice? Get it here.