The Hyundai Elantra N is almost five years old and it’s still one of the most fun new cars you can buy under $75,000. Not only is it much quicker in the real world than a Toyota GR Corolla, it’s communicative and playful to a degree that no other current front-wheel-drive car can quite match. This includes Honda’s pedigreed Civic Type R.
However, there is one way in which the Elantra N is objectively on the back leg compared to the Honda Civic Type R, and that’s power. While Hyundai’s sport compact pumps out 276 horsepower and 289 lb.-ft. of torque, Honda’s hottest hatch makes 315 horsepower and 310 lb.-ft. of torque. That’s the sort of difference you’ll notice on a power-friendly racetrack, but it seems that Hyundai has a plan. The marque’s teased the next Elantra N’s engine on Instagram, and it might just be growing in displacement.
The teaser video starts with an absolutely glowing downpipe. A downpipe that doesn’t look like the one on a standard Elantra N. See, the two-liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine in the current Elantra N uses a four-bolt flange to connect its downpipe to its turbocharger. In this shot, we can clearly see that this downpipe is sealed to the hot side of the turbocharger using a V-band. While it would be easy to brush this off as simply another sort of turbocharger, not only has Hyundai used V-bands for this in other applications, another shot in the teaser video gives us much to be excited about.
Hang on, that isn’t the valve cover of the G4KH two-liter motor in a regular Elantra N. Judging by the ribbing of the cover and the location and depth of the oil filler hole, it looks like the valve cover for the 2.5-liter G4KP engine seen in models like the Sonata N-Line. In Hyundai’s aforementioned reasonably spicy midsize sedan, this unit pumps out 290 horsepower and 311 lb.-ft. of torque on regular gas. That’s 14 more horsepower and 22 more lb.-ft. of torque than the Elantra N does on premium fuel. Crucially, it comes hitched to the same sort of eight-speed wet-clutch DCT that’s already available in the Elantra N, just without the sport compact’s limited-slip differential.
It definitely seems like Hyundai’s testing something special because although it’s fielding one entry in the standard two-liter TCR class, it also has two entries in the SP 4T class, both bearing the designation “RP.” Could that stand for Race Prototype, perhaps? The SP 4T class is for turbocharged cars with up to 2.6 liters of displacement, lending additional plausibility to the 2.5-liter theory. Underneath the dazzle camouflage, it’s fairly obvious these RP cars feature a different aerodynamic package than the TCR car, and Hyundai has confirmed that “The brand-new cars are powered by a pre-production version of a new engine, intended as the replacement for the current two-litre powerplant that lies at the heart of the road-going Elantra N.”
Given how Hyundai’s familiar 2.5-liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine already makes strong power, can probably have a few more ponies juiced out of it on premium fuel, and is part of Hyundai’s latest Smartstream engine family, it would be a logical choice for the next Elantra N. If Hyundai does just that, the power gap between the Elantra N and the Honda Civic Type R could basically be eliminated.
Regardless of what’s under the hoods of these prototypes, we’re going to find out how they perform at the ADAC 24h Nürburgring next month, with race weekend happening from May 14 to May 17. Considering how bumpy and punishing the Nordschleife already is, running these pre-production engines around the clock on what is generally considered the world’s greatest racetrack sounds like a solid stress test. Hyundai already did it once with the two-liter engine in the current Elantra N, so we can likely expect more details on this new powertrain relatively soon.
Top graphic image: Hyundai
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