Albert Biermann, the head of Hyundai’s high-performance N division, recently took a swipe at the Volkswagen Golf GTI, saying that “after two laps, the fun is over”. But now a VW executive from Australia has hit back.
Michael Bartsch, managing director for Volkswagen Australia, branded the claims “extraordinary”, before effectively calling the Hyundai i30 N a “supposed rival”.
“Extraordinary claims are being made for supposed rivals that are not yet on sale,” Bartsch said, according to Drive.
“While any skunkworks can turn out a track-day special, the expertise and experience required to engineer a GTI or an R – cars that also excel in the real world – is rather more hard won,” he added.
“When you’ve owned a GTI or an R, it’s difficult to settle for anything less.”
Earlier, Biermann told the Australian press that the “standard” Golf GTI was not up to the rigours of repeated track use.
“There can be GTIs that are suitable for the track driving, but if you take the standard GTI, it’s not like that,” Biermann said.
“So with the [i30] N we clearly want to be more suitable for track driving, and give it more character … and the most important thing – make it much more fun to drive.
Biermann described the Golf GTI as “a great car”, but added that “after two laps, the fun is over”.
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