Festa is a special car launched by Beijing Hyundai for the Chinese market, which first appeared at the Beijing Auto Show in April 2018, it shares the same platform as Lingdong, but in Hyundai's product line, it is between Lingdong and Sonata, which is the so-called A-class sedan, and the official intentionally or unintentionally set the Honda Civic as the benchmark model.
In terms of design, the designer of Festa is Lee Sang-yeol, vice president of design at Hyundai Group, and adopts a new design DNA, which is officially called the dragon scale grille, and the style is much more radical than before, and does not conform to the mainstream aesthetic. As for the body part, it uses the more popular coupe shape, the hood and the body use a lot of tough lines, very powerful, for the sheet metal process requirements are relatively high, the tail of the ducktail and through the lights are also young people's favorite elements.
In terms of powertrain, Festa will be equipped with two turbocharged engines of the Gamma series, 1.4T and 1.6T, the output of the 1.4T engine is relatively normal, with a maximum horsepower of 140 hp and a maximum torque of 242Nm; The tuning of the 1.6T engine is more aggressive, the low-power version is 190 horsepower, and the high-power version is 204 horsepower, and there are very few models in the same class that have reached this number in the original factory data, and the official 000 acceleration score is 6.78 seconds, ranking first in the same class.
Both engines will be mated to a seven-speed dry dual-clutch gearbox, manufactured by Dymos and codenamed D7UF1. A lot of people will worry about the problem of dual clutch, one is reliability and the other is ride problem. The tuning level of modern dual-clutch transmission is very high, because it is adjusted separately for the road conditions in different regions, and Festa is specially adapted to the road conditions in China, and the shift speed is very good, and the shift speed is fast enough, but it will have the congenital defects of the dual-clutch transmission, such as the heat control is not as good as the wet dual-clutch when slowing down for a long time, and the reliability will also be more challenged.
Festa has four driving modes, Comfort, Sport, Economy and Smart, and the Smart mode is a combination of the first three, reacting differently to the stroke with the accelerator pedal in different conditions. Between the different modes, only the throttle response speed, shift timing and steering wheel damping feel are changed, but the sense of proportion between the steering wheel and the wheels is not changed, that is, in Sport mode, the steering wheel only becomes heavier, and the directivity still does not change.
Festa's suspension is the front MacPherson rear multi-link, the overall tuning will be harder, but the performance will be different in different road conditions, driving on the daily ordinary road, the suspension is more flexible, the filtration of small vibrations is better, and when encountering some slightly larger potholes, there will be a more stiff feeling, and it also depends on the size of the tire, the high-end tires will go to 18 inches, the feedback on the road feeling is clearer, and the comfort will be slightly worse.
Noise control is a shortcoming of Festa, tire noise and road noise may be the cost control of soundproof materials, at 60km/h, tire noise and suspension action is more obvious, wind noise may be aerodynamic is not perfect, when driving at high speed, the isolation of wind noise is useless, the noise isolation of the engine may be deliberate, the sound of the engine leaks into the cabin, plus the sound effect of the original exhaust, to create a sense of sport.
The interior is different from the existing Hyundai models, the interior of the Festa is very sporty, with two options, black and gray, black and red, and there will be more details in black and red, including red stitching on some seats, grid lines and red seat belts, creating a slightly more sporty atmosphere.
There is no sense of design in the central control part, mainly based on practicality, the upper, middle and lower are the screen, air conditioning outlets and air conditioning buttons. The touch screen supports voice assistant, the response speed is very fast, the touch is also very handy, and the built-in Baidu map and QQ music solve the two high-frequency functions of map and music playback. As for the storage space in the front row, Festa has a small compartment in front of the gear lever, two cup holders and a central armrest box, which is barely usable, not much.
The rear seat space belongs to the middle and lower level in the same class, the knee room is still marginal, the headroom is slightly cramped due to the slipback shape, the space under the front seats is slightly narrow, and the rear passengers cannot comfortably stretch their feet under the front seats; The seat cushion is on the short side and is not enough for thigh support. The high-end model has a central hand pillow, which will protrude a little, while the middle of the rear row of the low-end model is relatively flat. The trunk space is decent, and low-profile models do not support four-six ratio folding.