Author: carcoutureblog

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Hyundai i40 – Silly Car Names, What’s Yours Called?

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I’m just setting off to London to interview Tin-Tin Ho. The 16-year-old is a British table tennis protege and she’s going to give me a masterclass in the art of ping-pong.

Her father is obsessed with the game and named her brother Ping – at one point almost naming his daughter Pong too!

Finding the right name for a car is a major task and doesn’t always go right. There was the Dodge Swinger, Honda Life Dunk, Skoda Yeti, Renault Wind, Suzuki Every Joypop Turbo and the Mazda Bongo Friendee.

No wonder Hyundai uses the globally safe i40 – one of the few names beginning with an ‘i’ that isn’t owned by Apple…

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Hyundai i40 Tourer – Cute But No Match For A BMW 3 Series

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Just for a moment I thought the BMW 3 Series Touring was about to be toppled as my favourite, small family estate car. I was seduced by the lines and styling of the i40 – even prettier than the BMW I thought.

Unfortunately, while the Hyundai is an admirable performer, it just can’t compete with the 3 Series for performance and drivability. The BMW handles like a sports car and is exciting to drive – the i40 is lukewarm by comparison.

You might well expect this from a car that costs considerably less than the BMW but I just wish the Koreans could make a slightly quicker version, then I’d be seriously tempted to buy one.

As it is, the classy looks of the Hyundai aren’t matched by the engine under the bonnet. The 136bhp model we are testing reaches 60mph in 12 seconds, sluggish when compared to many of its key rivals…

 

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Hyundai i40 Tourer – Why Losing Your Car Key Is No Longer The Hassle It Used To Be

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September 6 Why is it we still have to mess about with car keys? Pretty much every vehicle Car Couture test these days either has keyless ignition – which means the little fob usually just stays in my pocket, or stashed in the centre console.

The downside is that it’s much easier to lose the bloody thing. Putting a key in the ignition means you know exactly where to find it, every time.

So when I couldn’t find the key to the i40 yesterday, there was the usual moment of headless chicken panic. You only discover a missing key when you actually need it after all.

i40 has keyless recognition, so at least I knew it wasn’t in the vicinity of the car. I’d worn three coats on Friday, so instead of searching through the pockets, all I had to do was bundle them all out to the car and see if the Hyundai ‘recognised’ them hidden in a pocket.

Nope. Thins were getting pretty desperate when I carried he kitchen bin out to the driveway, just in case the key had been accidentally lost in there. The Hyundai didn’t register a thing. Finally, having taken the dog tot he vet earlier, I hauled his basket out to the i40 et voila!

Tucked down inside was the key. Relief. Still, it can’t be long before we have fingerprint sensor pads or voice recognition to make it even easier…

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Hyundai i40 Tourer – More Stylish Than A BMW 3 Series Touring?

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September 5 My favourite estates are built by BMW. I’ve owned a string of 3 and 5 Series, brilliant cars that combine decent load space with great performance. They are sports cars with a large boot.

Yep, if it’s all about luggage capacity, go buy a Volvo. However, if you have children and still want to cut loose when they’re not in the car, there’s very little to rival the Beemer.

The i40 has just arrived at Car Couture and it looks every inch as good as the pictures. Better perhaps, because the interior is seriously cool. Imagine that – a Hyundai with a funky dashboard!

Looking at the spec sheet, it appears to have plenty of standard equipment as well. Even the entry model features alloys, Bluetooth, air con and auto lights and wipers. The Premium adds leather, panoramic sunroof and keyless entry.

The question is, will it drive anywhere near as good as the BMW – or is the i40 just a cheaper, poor imitation?

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Infiniti QX70 – Is It As Good As A Range Rover Sport Or BMW X5?

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Last day with the QX70 and I think it’s going to be a split decision. On the one hand, the bold looks and sumptuous interior make it feel every inch as good as the Range Rover Sport cabin.

On the other, the Infiniti has twitchy handling on all but the smoothest of road surfaces, the diesel engine lacks punch and the rest of the petrol range is incredibly expensive to run.

The steering is sharp and responsive but I think the majority of people will find the firm ride not to their liking. You have the option of ‘sport’ or ‘normal’ suspension settings but the adjustment feels minimal.

So, if you like the fearsome looks and exclusivity of the QX70, I think it would be easy to overlook the other issues. However, I imagine many people will compare it with a BMW X5 and realise the German car is a cut above in every respect…

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Infiniti QX70 – Looks Like The Devil’s Own Chariot

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My neighbour, the Land Rover specialist, has just put a new exhaust on my ancient Series III. A die-hard Range Rover fan through and through, even he was impressed with the sinister face of the QX70.

He’s right – the SUV looks like the Devil’s own chariot when it appears in your rear view mirror. That huge front grille and squat stance are a monster presence.

A cross between a Porsche Cayenne and the old Hyundai Santa Fe, the curvy, bulbous shape is easy on the eye, if slightly dated by modern standards.

The styling of the Infiniti has grown on me. It certainly turns heads – just what you’d expect for a car costing almost £50k…

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Infiniti QX70 – Self-Healing Paint Could Mean No More Sunday polishing Your Paintwork

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The days of washing you car on the driveway every Sunday have (fortunately!) long gone. A friend of mine recently told me she had no idea that you were supposed to wash and polish cars on a regular basis to protect the paintwork – her BMW hadn’t seen soap for nine months!

Perhaps Infiniti’s self-repairing paint was designed especially for people like her. It was developed by scientists at parent company Nissan about eight years ago.

A special top layer of highly elastic resin is applied to the bodywork that gives the paintwork flexibility – allegedly ‘healing’ 80 per cent of surface marks.

Now this doesn’t mean that if your Infiniti is keyed by an oik during the night that it will miraculously look perfect again in the morning. However, it does should like the Scratch Shield technology could be another nail in the coffin of car car products – and Sunday mornings polishing on the driveway…

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Infiniti QX70 – The SUV With Bleeping Boot Madness

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Every car – and I mean every car – has an Achilles’ Heel. It’s the annoying lack of high grade fuel pumps if you own a Ferrari, the tyre noise on a Porsche 911, or the poor side support in the seats of the Mercedes SLK.

The Infiniti has one very painful feature and UK buyers will cringe every time they use it. The tailgate beeps like a reversing lorry when you press the remote opening button!

Yep, it’s a nanny state and the QX – targeted at accident prone/I’ll sue you in the morning Americans – suffers more than most. I can’t seem to override the auto opening feature either and it’s driving me mad.

WHY do I need to be told my boot is opening when I have pressed the button? It opens at about 1mph and is hardly going to give you a serious head injury? Can somebody please tell me the bloody point?

 

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Infiniti QX70 – The SUV Motoring Journalists Just Can’t Decide On…

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Whether the QX70 receives a good review or not seems to depend on which side of the Atlantic it was written. American motoring journalists are much more positive – UK hacks give the SUV an ‘average’ rating at best.

The reason for this great divide appears to revolve around fuel economy. With cheaper fuel in the US, it’s less of an issue but here, well, that different! Even the normally sober What Car magazine claim ‘the huge costs involved make the QX70 prohibitively expensive to run’.

While even the diesel we’re testing today incurs the maximum rate of company car tax (225 g/km), I’m still achieving more mpg than last week’s hybrid Lexus 450h. 30mpg seems OK to me and the Infiniti is good fun to drive too.

The seats are low, which adds to the sporty feel, the standard, seven-speed auto gearbox shifts smoothly and that V6 diesel sounds quite fruity under the bonnet.

After reading a raft of negative reviews, I’m pleasantly surprised by the Infiniti. It may be a poor man’s Porsche Cayenne but it’s all the better for it…

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Infiniti QX70 – A Lesser-Seen Piece of Auto Erotica

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Every time I visit London it’s a smorgasbord of auto erotica. There’s a Porsche parked in every street and last week I counted three Rolls-Royce in the space of a minute.

It’s not quite like that in the Cotswolds – unless you include the Range Rover Autobiography or a New Holland tractor. Even so, I can appreciate the urge to want to drive something different, which is where the Infiniti comes in.

OK, it might look like a Porsche Cayenne/Hyundai Santa Fe with on add-shaped nose but drive the QX70 and you can almost the feel the eyes of other drivers checking out your bodywork.

So UK drivers, here’s a potted history. Infiniti launched in 1989 in the US, they came to Europe in 2008, partnered Red Bull in Formula 1 from 2011 and from next year will build a new compact car, called the Q30, in Sunderland.

The QX70 was originally launched in 2003 as the FX, updating its name in 2013. Is it any good? First driving report tomorrow…