The 2020 Hyundai Veloster Turbo—save your cash and buy the manual - Ars Technica

A good recent example of that is the Hyundai Veloster N, a Nürburgring-tuned hot hatch that's garnered plenty of praise for its smile-to-dollar ratio.

Instead, I just spent a week with that car's cheaper, less powerful stablemate—the 2020 Hyundai Veloster Turbo.

In fact, although the Veloster Turbo starts at $23,350 for the R-Spec, our test car was actually the Veloster Turbo Ultimate, a fully loaded $28,350 model that actually costs a few hundred dollars more than the Veloster N.

That's on top of a hefty serving of standard equipment across the Turbo lineup including LED head- and taillights, blindspot monitoring (with rear cross-traffic alerts), Android Auto, Apple CarPlay, and Sirius XM.

Because this is a Veloster Turbo Ultimate, you only get two pedals—this one comes with a seven-speed dual clutch transmission.

There is a six-speed manual gearbox but only with the cheaper Turbo R-Spec.

The Turbo Ultimate tips the scales at about 2,987lbs (1,354kg), so its power-to-weight ratio isn't bad, and the power and weight are both close to the Honda Civic Si and a little worse than the VW Golf GTI.

Unfortunately, while it might be pretty green for a hot hatch, the Turbo Ultimate doesn't quite set the pulse racing when it comes to how the car drives.

Similar to when we tested the Golf GTI, this is a case where the cheaper car—the $23k Turbo R-Spec—is probably a better option than spending nearly $30,000 on the fully loaded model.

Particularly when the Veloster N costs about the same.