Hyundai Elantra N Continues To Punch Above Its Weight, Beating Toyota GR Corolla In Edmunds’ U-Drag Race

The Hyundai Elantra N is the kind of car that shouldn’t be nearly as enjoyable to drive as it is. With a starting price of about $35,000, it’s by no means cheap, but for your money, you get a surprisingly track-capable autocross star that’s easy to drive fast and even comes with a standard manual transmission. Then there’s the Toyota GR Corolla. It starts about $4,000 higher than the Elantra, but you get more power, it’s a hatchback and, perhaps most importantly, it comes with a fancy all-wheel-drive system that allows you to change the torque split based on your driving needs. 

As enjoyable as the Elantra N is to drive, at least on paper, there’s no reason it should be able to compete with the GR Corolla. The Toyota makes more power, sends that power to more wheels and is even a little newer than the Elantra N. What you see on paper and what you get in real life aren’t always the same, though, as our friends at Edmunds recently demonstrated with an automatic GR Corolla and a dual-clutch Elantra N in the latest episode of their U-Drags series. Because somehow, the cheaper Hyundai won.

If you aren’t familiar with Edmunds’ U-Drags, it’s exactly what the name suggests — a race down a long straight where the drivers must then make a U-turn and return to the starting line. It’s the kind of race that rewards a quick launch, but braking, handling, power delivery, top speed and all sorts of other factors also come into play, and there’s no guarantee the first car off the line will win. And to try to take driver skill out of the equation, they switch cars after the first race. It may not be the end-all be-all of performance tests, but at the very least, it’s fun and informative. 

As you’ll see in the video above, in both races, the Elantra N was the clear winner. Maybe with more practice and a few tweaks, they could have gotten a better launch out of the GR Corolla’s all-wheel-drive system, but honestly, who cares? They’re each going to attract different buyers regardless of how the race went, and they’re both still semi-affordable performance bargains. It’s just cool to see the Elantra N hang with the more expensive, more advanced GR Corolla and, in this particular test, come out ahead. Complain about the styling all you want, but the Hyundai Elantra N really is better than it has any right to be.