Over the past few years, Hyundai has been developing its N Division of vehicles. These are more track-focused sports cars and vehicles that offer superior performance to the other vehicles on their lineup. Many brands have divisions like this, such as TRD for Toyota or NISMO for Nissan. We thought we’d see how one of the first creations from Hyundai’s N Division measures up to one of its high-performance competitors, by pitting the 2019 Hyundai Veloster N against the 2019 Nissan 370Z NISMO.
Like N Division, NISMO is Nissan’s in-house tuning, motorsports and performance division. It’s been around since 1984, so it has a lot more experience than Hyundai. However, Hyundai has been making a lot of waves in the World Rally Championship over the past few years, which has led to it creating the N Division so that it might make civilian versions of its successful race cars.
If you’ve already looked at our comparison between the regular Veloster and 370Z, then you’ll see that this comparison is actually quite similar. Both vehicles have an increase in power, but their spatial specifications remain the same. Unfortunately, the Veloster N does lose some efficiency as a result of its increase in power. Let’s go through it row by row to analyze things a little more closely.
While the 370Z NISMO hangs onto the 370Z model’s 20 miles per gallon combined fuel economy rating, the Veloster N loses three miles per gallon. Even still, that’s 5 mpg more than the Nissan sports car achieves, meaning some pretty nice savings at the pump. The Veloster N has a HUGE increase in power, gaining 103 HP over its regular model. That’s a huge difference compared to the NISMO’s increase of just 18 HP. Unfortunately, the 370Z NISMO still achieves 100 HP more than the Veloster N.
Space stays the same in both vehicles, as mentioned, meaning the Veloster N blows its Nissan competitor out of the water by offering 13.0 cubic feet more space and two extra seats. If you can overlook the hefty disadvantage in power for the Veloster N’s leg up in efficiency and space, then the it might be the perfect vehicle for you. After all, even though it gives up 100 horses, 250 HP is still very impressive!
