2026 Volkswagen GTI vs Hyundai Elantra N

In front of us today, we have two extremes of affordable automotive performance. The extroverted Elantra N and the introverted GTI. So which one's the better package? Let's find out. But before we move on, let's take a second to talk about our sponsor. Custom made for an exact fit, WeatherTech offers a complete line of protection parts for your car's interior. There's the original WeatherTech Floor Liner and new Floor Liner HP made from a more flexible material. Both work with your OE floor mat clips and protect up the side of your footwell. Plus, the Floor Liner HP comes with these spikes for even better grip. And here's an exciting new product, the Drop-In Impact Liner. It's made from the same durable material as the Floor Liner HP and comes with a grippy surface to prevent cargo from sliding around. Plus, these rings underneath disperse impacts and allow for proper drainage. It's a great alternative to spray in bed liners without the cost, mess, or permanent commitment. Or, it can also be put on top for an additional layer of protection. All WeatherTech products come with a lifetime guarantee, so do yourself a favor and hit the link in the description to find a perfect fit for your car today. Let's talk about the best things about the Volkswagen GTI and I have to start with the fact that it's just so livable. This car is just convenient all the time from the hatch in the back to how comfortable and sophisticated it is to drive, all the technology in this cabin. I love that it's it's not just all the fancy like phone technology etc it also has you know all the lane departure systems all the safety systems you could possibly want or ask for and at the same time they're not intrusive so it really lets you still drive the car this package is just as convenient as you can possibly get but maybe the biggest highlight is this car's performance it just it lulls you almost into sleep and thinking that it's just this common boring machine but wow like you put it in the sport mode uh the suspension stiffens up uh you really get access to all that torque and the car will just like accelerate away you're almost like holding on to the steering wheel as it just twitches as the car rockets forward it's it's amazing i love this steering wheel too with the uh it's really thickly bolstered uh just feels like a premium like wild fun experience way more than you expect i had it for two days before i ever turned it on to sport mode and uh yeah i got lulled into that feeling of this is just a you know a daily runabout and then when you do activate it's like holy crap and finally which is sort of again on the practicality side it's a hatchback so you can drop the rear seats put tons of stuff in it, take lots of people. It just makes life easy. So what's not to love about the Volkswagen GTI? I guess to me it's just too subtle. I look at this car on the outside and you know it's a nice handsome looking car but it doesn't jump out at you. Maybe it's the teenager or I want to be a teenager. It just doesn't excite me to look at it. Another gripe I have with this car are the rear seats. Now a hatchback, it's supposed to be practical, right? So yeah, you've got some cargo room and that's all great, but I'm six foot one. And if you're sitting behind me, I don't know, frankly, if you can, I certainly can't fit behind there. It's pretty tight. And so I kind of think that you're giving up a lot of sort of performance and other fun to have this functional hatchback and with, with rear seats and yet the rear seats are kind of useless. And finally, all the true enthusiasts will agree with me here. There's no proper manual transmission. It has Volkswagen's dual clutch system, which is pretty cool. And it actually feels like a manual in many respects. You can actually feel it sort of creep forward and do those things, which is interesting. But the downside of that is, say, you know, you're in your garage and then you didn't quite get far enough ahead. When you do want to move little bit ahead it sort of does that that lurch when it just like jumps and goes uh and so there's some like rough aspects of that which i don't love uh overall i feel like a proper manual transmission in this car um sadly volkswagen doesn't make it anymore would go a very long way to making this excellent package a lot more fun okay let's start with the positives performance the elantra n has 276 horsepower and 289 pounds feet of torque which for a car of this size is a lot when it goes 0 to 60 in five and a half seconds and slightly faster if you have the automatic that's quick so that's the one of the best features about this car if you want to go fast this is a car that will do that related to that is it has a choice of transmissions six-speed manual which is what we have here or an eight-speed dual clutch automatic if you talk about interior which another big positive for this car is the steering wheel shifter clutch relationship are really well designed steering wheel is nice and thick and meaty so is the shifter the clutch is light with smooth engagement and the seats are very grippy and very supportive so if you want to do some performance driving hyundai really has nailed that in the Elantra N more broadly the car has a lot of room a lot of space it has four doors and a usable trunk so this really is a performance car for all seasons on the downside the interior does have a lot of plastic as i said the steering wheel and the shifter are really nice but if you were to look at some of the other areas of the dash the door panels they are kind of cheap a lot of hard plastic that doesn't have a real quality feel related to that is the infotainment system doesn't have wireless CarPlay or wireless Android Auto it requires a USB a cable that makes me think we're still in the 2010s so that's a bit of a drawback and finally and this is subjective but i feel like the Elantra N's looks are a little bit overdone there are a lot of lines and shapes compared to the GTI with its classic hatchback form the Elantra N feels like it's just trying a little bit too hard to look cool but now that we've talked about these two cars let's find out which one's the winner okay lee so we've driven them both what's the better car i really like the Elantra N 276 horsepower all the N stuff manual transmission it looks aggressive but at its core it's still a family car it is it kind of struggles to leave that behind i think you said that earlier we were chatting versus the GTI is really it used to be sort of a Golf GTI really now it's just a GTI it's it is its own thing it's separated from those roots it's this pure car and it's got a lot of well it's sort of a bit more austere i think i think you said that too i like that description um it's really quite nice you know that even the simple things about it are very high-end uh and maybe that brings up a point so this thing is 35 grand this thing is basically 35 grand to start but as equipped it's 42. so would you pay an extra 7 000 bucks for this gti that's a really good question i mean this car has the manual that this car used to have but doesn't anymore but like i said to you it has the german pedigree everybody knows what a gti is instinctively and i think that that helps put this car over the top between these two yeah i feel like the elantra and it almost like it's like this isn't seems like it does it sort of effortlessly this is feels like it's a bit of the kids say a try hard um and so uh i think there's just something to that and yeah like i think hands down we both agree this would be the easy winner the the volkswagen if it had a manual transmission so come on volkswagen um but uh otherwise regardless even with the price even without the manual it's still our fan