I survived both the event and cross country air travel on Thanksgiving weekend.
If that's typical of a press event for car releases and such...are you guys hiring?! I had a blast! Night before, we had what felt like a combo of trackday classroom sessions, Hyundai marketing, and a safety briefing, all rolled into one hour in front of a projector. Plenty engaging. Then had dinner and some vino. Next day, met our instructors and paired up. Each instructor had 5 cars/5 pairs of people. Each pair got a car and took turns doing the same exercise vs riding shotgun in the morning. We did some "vehicle control" type exercises with the Elantra N, then drifting on a wet skidpad in the Ioniq 5 N, finally an Auto-X with the Ioniq 5 N. Stopped for [a very tasty] lunch and for the afternoon took the Ioniq 5's for some lead-follow laps, then the Elantra N for lead follow laps. During the track driving, you stayed on pitlane if your "co-driver" was on track, which was good. Really liked the guy I was paired with, still wasn't sure I wanted to hot lap with him while I was strapped, helplessly, in the passenger's seat. As it was starting to get towards the end of the day, our last "task" was to pile into some Ioniq 5 N's so the instructors could pilot us around the course. Holy cow, with my driving, I thought the Ioniq felt heavy and on the verge of understeer a lot of the lap, but we ripped off an absolutely killer lap, with 4 adults in the car. Blame it on the locked down settings we drove with vs the totally uncorked settings my German pilot, or (far more likely) blame it on my driving skills vs his, but holy cow. Thing is clearly very capable.
Overall I'd love to do as many events like that as I possibly could, and am super appreciative of the opportunity and hospitality from Hyundai. I seemed to quite possibly be one of the only attendee's who was there purely from signing up expressing interest (a sign-up I completed when I originally read the GRM article on the first iteration of this event). The other attendees seemed to be split between active members in various "N enthusiast" clubs and people who owned or leased a Hyundai (though not necessarily an N-model). I was neither. But I was smiling bigger than a lot of them, in spite of the jetlag.
That really cool that they treated everyone so well. Of course, it makes good sense to do so since a seed has been planted and attendees may be seen as prospects for future purchases and "brand ambassadors."
And they had their Pikes Peak car, TC America car and an Ioniq 5 test bed car on static display which was cool. Forgot that. Pikes Peak car has some large by big aero.
In reply to Spearfishin :
Is the one without any body the test bed? Way cool looking either way.
Colin Wood said:
In reply to Spearfishin :
Is the one without any body the test bed? Way cool looking either way.
It is. Can't remember what their semi-marketing name for it was, but they said it's a functional test mule/prototype. Ioniq 5, but apparently slightly shortened wheelbase.
Edit: marketing term, "rolling lab". That particular rolling lab's name, "RN24". Skip to around 3:30 mark Video
Cool stuff! Thanks for reporting back about it!
P3PPY said:
Cool stuff! Thanks for reporting back about it!
QFT.
It's nice to see a manufacturer of "affordable" vehicles do something like this for the consumers in the market at this price point.
Spearfishin said:
I survived both the event and cross country air travel on Thanksgiving weekend.
If that's typical of a press event for car releases and such...are you guys hiring?! I had a blast! Night before, we had what felt like a combo of trackday classroom sessions, Hyundai marketing, and a safety briefing, all rolled into one hour in front of a projector. Plenty engaging. Then had dinner and some vino. Next day, met our instructors and paired up. Each instructor had 5 cars/5 pairs of people. Each pair got a car and took turns doing the same exercise vs riding shotgun in the morning. We did some "vehicle control" type exercises with the Elantra N, then drifting on a wet skidpad in the Ioniq 5 N, finally an Auto-X with the Ioniq 5 N. Stopped for [a very tasty] lunch and for the afternoon then took the Ioniq 5's for some lead-follow laps, then the Elantra N for lead follow laps. During the track driving, you stayed on pitlane if your "co-driver" was on track, which was good. Really liked the guy I was paired with, still wasn't sure I wanted to hot lap with him while I was strapped, helplessly, in the passenger's seat. As it was starting to get towards the end of the day, our last "task" was to pile into some Ioniq 5 N's so the instructors could pilot us around the course. Holy cow, with my driving, I thought the Ioniq felt heavy and on the verge of understeer a lot of the lap, but we ripped off an absolutely killer lap, with 4 adults in the car. Blame it on the locked down settings we drove with vs the totally uncorked settings my German pilot, or (far more likely) blame it on my driving skills vs his, but holy cow. Thing is clearly very capable.
Overall I'd love to do as many events like that as I possibly could, and am super appreciative of the opportunity and hospitality from Hyundai. I seemed to quite possibly be one of the only attendee's who was there purely from signing up expressing interest (a sign-up I completed when I originally read the GRM article on the first iteration of this event). The other attendees seemed to be split between active members in various "N enthusiast" clubs and people who owned or leased a Hyundai (though not necessarily an N-model). I was neither. But I was smiling bigger than a lot of them, in spite of the jetlag.
Yeah that sounds pretty identical to the HDX I did last year, except it was pre-Ioniq5N. Although that was the event I became convinced that the regular Ioniq5 was the ideal car for my wife after we did the skidpad stuff with them.
The format is really similar to press launches, except maybe a bit more luxurious from a pacing perspective. At thee launches you tend to be up a little earlier and out a little later, and the presentations are maybe slightly less marketing based and more product fact based. But the shape of the event is really, really similar. It was actually really cool to see them take a format I was familiar with and adapt it for a more civilian-facing product.
Glad you had a good time. Now if Hyundai would only get us an Ioniq5N to take to the FIRM...
