Our favourite cars of 2024: Hyundai Ioniq 5 N

Minutes after a Hyundai Ioniq 5 N been dropped off with me, it was off to a Gatwick Airport car park. I got back late the next night, a bit jaded, and then… two wheels kerbed, brutally so.

It happened at opposite corners on a spiral down ramp towards the exit of the car park. The ramp was tight: the nearside rear was done first, and in trying to correct it I overdid it and took out the offside front.

This was far worse than the nearside gloss white alloys of a Vauxhall Adam I took out on the North Circular one night getting out the way of an ambulance, or even the McLaren 570S I created a new alloy wheel design for on the Channel Tunnel, having so carefully edged through the first 95% of the carriages and their raised metal kerbs. 

Too big, too heavy, too wide: that’s where my mind went with the Ioniq 5 N on the drive home. The road testers had already given it five stars, so I’d just take their word for it and try and not do any more damage to it before the nice man from Hyundai could come pick it up again, and mark up the sheet with my indiscretions. The train to the office isn’t too bad, anyway.

But it was with me for a shoot at Bedford Autodrome, and the show had to go on. I’m so glad it did. Even Geoffrey Boycott’s stick of rhubarb could get this car sideways within only a corner or two, and not feel out of control or like the car is getting away from you. 

Plenty will dismiss the ‘manual’ gearbox and ‘engine’ sound as gimmicks, but they are part of the car’s charm. There’s no such dismissing of the real star of the show: the electronic limited slip differential, which gives the car its quite incredible agility and adjustability, and playfulness on the throttle.

The best thing about the Ioniq 5 N is that it’s the first attempt from anyone at making a hot hatch-style electric car that’s about far more than power. And for it to be so good first up bodes reassuringly well for what is to come.