Hyundai i20 Coupe (2015-2017)

The Hyundai i20 Coupe is based on the standard five-door i20, but its sportier styling and three-door body are intended to appeal to a younger audience.

You can choose between 83bhp 1.2-litre petrol and 99bhp or 118bhp 1.0-litre turbocharged petrol. The 1.0T is the choice for a sportier driving experience, but there's no diesel option if you want lower running costs.

While performance is far from sporty, the engines are more than adequate around town. The suspension setup makes the i20 comfortable and the interior is nicely designed and built. The car comes with plenty of standard equipment and is very competitively priced.

There are certainly cars of the i20 Coupe’s size that are more fun to drive, like the Ford Fiesta, and ones that are more refined, like the new Volkswagen Polo, but if good looks combined with a low starting price and low running costs are your priorities, then the i20 Coupe is seriously worth considering.

We recommend the higher-powered 1.0T in SE trim. It's much livelier than the sluggish 1.2, while SE trim comes with all the equipment most buyers of cars like this need and expect.

The Hyundai i20 range finished 29th out of the 75 cars ranked in our 2017 Driver Power owner satisfaction survey of cars currently on sale in the UK.

The Hyundai i20 Coupe is available with two engines – a 1.2 four-cylinder petrol or 1.0 turbocharged three-cylinder petrol in two power outputs. Hyundai claims the 118bhp 1.0T will return 58.9mpg, but we only managed 41.3mpg when we tested it.

The 1.2-litre petrol engine is capable of 55.4mpg. It produces CO2 emissions of 119g/km, resulting in a slightly higher tax bill of £30 a year.

The car is cheap to insure, with the 1.2 petrol sitting in insurance group 5. A fixed-price three-year service plan costs £349 and a five-year plan is £649 – if you go for the diesel model, the plans are £100 more expensive.

Hyundai offers the i20 Coupe with the same petrol engine range as the five-door hatchback, so you have a choice between an 83bhp 1.2-litre petrol and a 1.0 turbo petrol with either 99bhp or 118bhp. The idea is that younger buyers want sporty Coupe styling, but not high fuel and insurance costs. The 1.2 isn't particularly quick, but the 118bhp 1.0T is a lively performer with a raspy three-cylinder engine note. It delivers good acceleration, but you do need to rev it to get the most out of its power. For comparison, the Vauxhall Corsa 1.0T is slightly less powerful, but it's faster and quieter on the move.

Both petrol engines can become quite noisy at speed, and this is quite frequent because you need to use full revs to make the most of the i20's power in both engines. They're also quite slow when you set off, plus high-speed refinement isn't as good as some rivals thanks to plenty of tyre noise.

Even though the i20 Coupe isn’t particularly quick, it is comfortable thanks to a suspension setup that feels smooth around town and surprisingly good on the motorway. Thankfully, this doesn’t translate to the car wallowing around corners either, as body lean is minimal. The steering feels direct, too, so while the i20 isn’t particularly fun or sporty, it’s by no means bad to drive.

The interior of the i20 Coupe, much like in the five-door i20, is well laid out and looks neat. Quality, while no match for the new Volkswagen Polo or Vauxhall Corsa, is up there with the best of the rest. You can choose optional dashboard trim that adds flashes of orange around the cabin to add a little vibrancy and the dials are simple and easy to read, but everywhere else the i20 feels a little plain and dull.

You can also add a touchscreen sat-nav for £675, which gives the interior a but of a more modern feel, plus it's the same system found elsewhere in the Hyundai range, so it's relatively easy to use.

The cabin is well insulated, so the car doesn’t get too noisy at higher speeds. One problem for passengers in the back is that although legroom is generally okay, the roofline is lower than in the standard five-door i20, so taller people will find headroom a little restricted, plus the small rear windows contribute to a slight feeling of claustrophobia.

The Hyundai i20 Coupe actually has a larger boot than the five-door hatchback, but because the Coupe has a space-saver spare wheel as standard, its 336-litre boot capacity is reduced to 311 litres. Although this is 15 litres smaller than the standard car, it’s still large for a model in this class and the boot is a good shape. Fold the standard 60:40 split-folding rear seats and the space expands to 986 litres, compared to the five-door’s 1,042 litres. The boot lip is a little high, but it's no worse than in a Vauxhall Corsa, but the boot itself is square and there's no intrusion from the wheelarches.

If practicality is very important, you’d be much better going for the five-door i20. Naturally, the extra doors make accessing the rear seats much easier and the higher roofline improves headroom in the back. The Coupe doesn’t feel particularly small or cramped inside, but the five-door is undoubtedly the more practical of the two, and there's more legroom in the back of a Vauxhall Corsa three-door.

In the front, there's a cubbyhole in the armrest between the seats (where fitted), a tray in front of the gearlever and well-sized door bins, plus the glovebox will fit a large bottle of water easily. There are also two ISOFIX points in the rear for child seats, although access to the rear is a bit tricky because the roof is low and the car has quite a low ride height anyway.

The i20 Coupe comes with six airbags, electronic stability control, hill-start assistance and tyre-pressure monitoring as standard, plus a space-saver spare wheel.

The i20 range was rated above average for reliability in our 2017 Driver Power owner satisfaction survey of cars currently on sale in the UK. Of the owners who responded, only 3.6% reported experiencing a problem with their car on one or more occasion.

Prices for the Hyundai i20 Coupe start at less than £13,000, which is excellent value for money and will appeal to the younger buyers the car is primarily aimed at.

The i20 Coupe comes in three specifications; SE, Sport and Sport Nav, with all models offering an impressive amount of equipment.

The entry-level SE comes with kit such as 16-inch alloy wheels, air-conditioning, cruise control, Bluetooth phone connectivity and rear parking sensors. Sport adds larger 17-inch alloy wheels, interior chrome door handles, climate control, LED daytime running lights, electric door mirrors and an upgraded stereo. Top-of-the-range Sport Nav cars come with a seven-inch touchscreen sat-nav system that incorporates a rear-view camera and DAB digital radio.

The only options on the i20 Coupe are metallic paint and fixed-price servicing.