The Veloster Turbo Is The Super-Rare Hot Hyundai That Didn't Quite Work

Hyundai has finally got the hot hatchback right. The i30 N is staggeringly good, but it’s not the first time the Korean brand has tried to break the scene. Welcome to the world of the extremely rare Veloster Turbo.

We can’t speak for other markets but in the UK the Veloster Turbo is as rare as a finished project car. There are good reasons for that; the principal one being that it wasn’t really up to scratch against the likes of the Golf GTI. It was always intended to sit a step lower than the famous VW both in price and performance, but that left it in a no-man’s land. It was more expensive and less entertaining than the Fiesta ST, and simply not as good as a Seat Leon Cupra.

Hyundai stopped importing it into the UK pretty quickly because of poor sales. That was a shame, though, because while the hot Veloster, with its extremely fist-friendly exhausts, was never going to be a modern hot hatch legend, it was an unusual all-rounder with scarcity, good looks and modest practicality on its side, not to mention respectable speed.

There are just four for sale on Auto Trader at the time of writing, with fewer than 70 reportedly left on the road according to howmanyleft.co.uk. Our pick is the cheapest of the bunch, but for your £10,450 you get a metallic grey 184bhp car with a manual cog whisk, a suggested – and conservative – 0-62mph time of 8.4 seconds and a top speed of 133mph.

It has 55,000 miles on the clock and should have a full Hyundai warranty until March next year, but there’s also a 12-month backup plan with the seller – a franchised Honda dealer. There’s a bit of annoying kerbing on the wheel that we can see more closely in the (numerous) pics, but you can’t have everything. The quirky three-door layout is the correct way round for the UK, too, letting you regurgitate your rear passengers straight onto the pavement.

The four-seater has plenty of tech, from a reversing camera and parking sensors to climate control, Bluetooth, leather upholstery and the large touch-screen in the middle of the dashboard. You can charge your phone via USB, but we don’t think Android Auto or Apple CarPlay made it to this car.

The Veloster Turbo’s flaws help make it interesting, and any car this rare has to be worth keeping an eye on. Sure, it will probably depreciate hard until suddenly there are only a handful left, but at that point it might start to become something of an unsung classic. One day you might even get most of your money back…