The remit: Take a rally stage slayer, put it into into the hands of a gearbox grinch for the Christmas shopping run.

Price: $49,990

Powertrain: 1.6-litre turbocharged petrol engine, 150kW/275 Nm (304Nm on overboost), front-wheel drive, 7.7 L/100km, 175 g/km CO2.

Vital statistics: 4075mm long, 1775mm wide, 1440mm high, wheelbase 2580mm.

For: Very nice looks; described as a “corner rascal” for good reason; full of performance-oriented goodies.

Against: Personally, I’d prefer it with auto.

 AT the time of the year when the big guy in the bright red suit boards his bright red sleigh to deliver presents to households … I’ve been doing pretty much the same in a bright red little hot hatch.

It’s widely thought Santa Wears red as because of advertising by Coca Cola in the 1930s. That’s not true. His costume is actually the result of several much older factors and characters, including 4th Century Greek bishop Saint Nicholas. But whatever the real reason(s), there’s no doubting that red is associated with Christmas.

Red is associated with performance cars, too. This Hyundai is a helluva lot of fun. When you are behind the wheel it is easy to imagine you’re Kiwi rallying ace Hayden Paddon in his Rally2 version.

Excepting, of course, that Hayden’s version develops a scorching 212 kilowatts of power, is permanent all-wheel drive and sports a five-speed sequential gearbox, whereas our version offers ‘only’ 150kW, is front-driven and has a standard six-speed manual.

And anyway, you wouldn’t want to be using Hayden’s car to tootle around town trying to finish your Christmas shopping – full-blown rally rockets would be just too tough to handle. The i20 N proved challenging enough as it was as I threaded my through all the inner-city stop-start heavy traffic conditions that were the norm during the leadup to Christmas.

Why? Because it has a manual transmission. One that was exceedingly easy to use. But a manual all the same.

Now I know motoring purists like to argue that manuals are superior to automatics because they allow the driver to better connect with their vehicles; to be at one with their cars, as they say.  It’s a load of malarkey of course. The real fact of the matter is that autos are far easier to drive in all motoring circumstances, urban as well as rural, which explains why these days only about one percent of all the world’s new passenger vehicles come with manual transmissions.

So all this raises the obvious question as to why the i20 N is only available with the manual gearbox.

To answer that, let’s return to 2015 when I visited the Hyundai stand at the Frankfurt Motor Show. There, Albert Biermann, the freshly appointed chief engineer with Hyundai’s new N sub-brand, outlined what N was going to be all about – the tweaking of ordinary production Hyundais so they could be high-performance cars.

“N is about the most thrilling winding roads. We love corners,” he said. “We want to create cars for the real enthusiasts. We want to give them that intangible emotional effect. The thrill of driving.”

Two years later the N brand did exactly that, unveiling the i30 N road-going hatch.

“We’ve been looking forward to this,” said Biermann at the vehicle’s unveiling at Hyundai’s research and development centre in Namyang, South Korea. “Our aim is to improve Hyundai’s strength by developing high-performance road cars that will bring more emotion to the brand.”

Since then we’ve taken delivery of the i30 N in both hatch and fastback forms, the Kona N compact SUV, and now the i20 N. There are differences though. The i30 N is available with both manual and auto, the Kona N is exclusively an auto, while the i20 N is exclusively a manual.

The reasoning behind that has to be because the diminutive i20 N is something of a toy. Everything about this car relates to the sort of performance that big kids love.

It offers three drive modes that when in N mode has the exhaust crackling and banging just like a real rally car; there’s a big red REV button on the steering wheel that when activated matches engine revs for sportier downshifts; and the hatch even has launch control which, if you have sufficient courage to set the system to catapult off at 5000rpm, is excitement extreme.

None of which can be used around town of course, unless you’re happy for pedestrians to regard you as an absolute dork. And use of launch control in the urban environment would be downright dangerous.

All this meant that during my time with the car, times spent Christmas shopping had me keeping quiet in Normal and even Eco modes, constantly rowing through the gears to match vehicle momentum. In that regard I don’t think I almost ever got past third gear. Frankly, during those times I would much rather the i20 N was an automatic.

The ride was quite hard, too. This sporty little hatch features a sport tuned suspension, and has 18-inch wheels, so there was thump and bump. Not uncomfortably so, but certainly noticeable.

From the shopping perspective there are some good things about the i20 N. It’s size means it is easy to manoeuvre, and its boot space of 310 litres with all seats in use is very good for a small hatch. And it is a real looker thanks to such exterior features as a chequered flag radiator grille, prominent rear spoiler, triangular brake lights, and those wheel arch-filling alloys.

But after several days of tootling around town in very heavy Christmas traffic, being forced to constantly go through the hassle of changing gear to keep revs up at the slower speeds, I found I regularly had a need to get out on to the open roads. It’s in that sort of environment where a car such as this excels – and where the true worth of a manual transmission quickly becomes apparent.

These days I am a much bigger fan of new-age automatic transmissions than manuals, because they are faster-acting and more efficient than any clutch-operated manual transmission can ever be. More fuel efficient, too.

But it is also true that a manual does allow a driver to more closely connect with a vehicle. It’s almost an empowering feeling to be rowing through the gears to keep engine revolutions in whatever sweet spot is desired.

And I think this is why this little Hyundai i20 N is such an enjoyable car. Get out on some of winding tarmac roads that are so common throughout the New Zealand countryside, take the opportunity to try out all those performance-oriented features aboard the little hatch, and you soon forget about all those hassles encountered trying to get Christmas shopping done in the days immediately prior to the festive season.

At this time of the year you could say it is the perfect Christmas toy for big kids.