It's called Thermal Plastic Olefin and while that sounds like a Swedish fish-packing plant, it's actually the process behind the high-quality, soft-touch plastics that you'll find inside the cabin of the new Hyundai i20. It may be the sort of arcane technical detail that usually gets shunted to the back of press reports, but Hyundai sees cabin quality and ambience as a key weapon in its armoury as it seeks to take on the Ford Fiesta and Volkswagen Polo for dominance of the European small car sales charts.
Hyundai wants to sell 100,000 i20s a year in Europe, around a third of what Ford manages to sell with the Fiesta. Its factory in Izmit, Turkey is already gearing up for increased demand - the outgoing i20 only managed to sell 400,000 units in total since 2008.
Riding on an entirely new platform, the i20 will go on sale late this year, with some Hyundai dealers hoping to have demo units on the ground just ahead of Christmas.
The engine range will kick off with a 75hp or 85hp 1.25-litre petrol engine, or a 100hp 1.4-litre unit. Diesel engines will be either a 1.1-litre unit with 75hp or a 90hp 1.4 but diesel supermini sales are tiny in Ireland, so expect the buk of our i20s to be the 1.25 petrol. All models are expected to have emissions of unver 100g/km.
The boot, 326-litres normally, expands to a whopping 1,042-litres when the back seats are folded.
High-end options, which Hyundai is keen to offer as part of its drive upmarket, will include an opening panoramic glass roof, LED daytime running lights, a mix of interior colours, leather seats, and an infotainment system that includes a 1GB hard drive for storing your music.
There will also be a sporty moel, badged by Hyundai's new 'N-Sport' high performance arm. Backed up by recent successes in the World Rally Championship for the i20, the N-Sport version is likely to use a turbocharged version of the 1.4-litre petrol engine.
