Hyundai Ioniq 6 N - long-term review

Funny how quickly things that were unthinkably awful not very long ago, can become the accepted norm. Paying £30 to get food delivered that would cost £12 to collect yourself. Or asking AI to pick your holiday, write your wedding vows or help you through a breakup. Or fake gearboxes.

Car enthusiasts are driven by authenticity we’ve learned; analogue sensations, mechanical interactions and anything fake and superfluous like dead-end vents or dummy tailpipes are the devil’s work. See the recent explosion of manuals in high-end fast stuff (and the restomod overload) for evidence.

So, fake gearboxes? Well, that’s the lowest of the low, the pinnacle of synthesised fun… like that bit in Demolition Man where Sly Stallone is baffled by the idea of having sex via VR headset.

However, it appears to have dawned on most of us that some interaction and sound, even fake interaction and sound, is better than bland silence. Like anything, this is because someone has taken the time and skill to execute it to perfection.

That someone is the engineering department at Hyundai, who first on the 5 N and now on the 6 N has delivered an N e-Shift system that doesn’t feel like a gimmick, it genuinely elevates the experience of driving this very fast car, quickly.

It’s a combination of how quickly the paddles respond to your finger flicks, the little torque burp and nudge in the back, the way the sound rises and falls perfectly in-step with the rev counter and your right foot. Even the burbles and bangs on the overrun are great fun. Then when you’ve had enough you simply switch back to silent assassin mode and go about your day. Can’t do that on a DSG Golf R with a coke can exhaust set permanently to obnoxious.

Honestly, I love it, and it’s the first thing I find myself describing every time someone asks me about the car. And the word is spreading – Honda has fitted a (admittedly not as sophisticated) system to its shoe-box-sized Super N, while Porsche has relented and upgraded the Taycan with an E-shift system.

Koenigsegg went typically banzai with its solution – a layer of software and hardware over its already fiendishly complicated nine-speed lightspeed gearbox to turn it into a manual-by-wire with an actual open-gate lever and a clutch pedal. The really clever bit is you can choose between manual control using paddles on the wheel, doing it old-school with your left leg and the lever, or putting it in pure auto.

Ferrari, too, has joined the club with the 12Cillindri Manuale – an analogue skin for its existing twin-clutch ‘box… and it's chuffing brilliant.

Am I surprised that the acceptance of electronic trickery is on the rise? When we live in world where some have a closer relationship with the AI assistant in their pocket than they do their loved ones, not really. I for one am all for it. What’s next? Software defined chokes? Simulated breakdowns on the M25? OK, not everything was better in the good old days.