Hyundai Cars

Hyundai Sonata Overview
There is only one model Hyundai Sonata available in South Africa and that is the 2.4L sedan in either manual or automatic. And it only comes in 4 colours too - Grey, Silver, White or Black. Sounds very much like Henry Ford’s famous saying about having your Ford in any colour as long as it is black!

That being said, the Sonata gets extremely good ratings all over and is definitely a GOOD BUY, although it does not come over as a particularly exciting car to drive and the exterior styling is not really anything remarkable.

But let’s not damn the car with faint praise - on with the detailed review to see why this car scores very high on most aspects of evaluating a car.

Looking at Hyundai’s trend for constant improvement, there might be great things in store for this car.

Interior
Everyone is impressed with the car’s roomy interior. Front seating and back seating offers a lot of space for both driver and passengers.

With regards to the features in the console, this is just as impressive for a mid-price range car.  It comes with a soft-touch plastic dashboard, easy to use controls, leather covered steering wheel, air conditioning, power windows, heated seats, leather interior, 8 power controlled seat settings for the passenger seat and so forth.

A couple of other interesting features are the built in climate control system, that re-circulates air inside the car if high levels of pollutants are detected outside, as well as a trip computer and a rear distance warning system.

Exterior
This is arguably the Sontata’s weak point - the styling is good, but just not exciting. Bland and boring, seems to be the overall opinion - but on the other hand, it is not bad. The styling was last updated in 2006.

Performance and Handling.
The Hyundai Sonata delivers adequate performance and a smooth ride, with firm and comfortable handling. Its noise control is very good since even at high speeds the Sonata’s cabin is surprisingly quiet. Transmission is smooth for both the automatic as well as the manual, although there does seem to be slight pause when downshifting.

Safety
This is where the Sonata really shines, getting extremely high safety scores in the United States Government safety tests (from the http://www.safercar.gov/  site).

The car comes with a multitude of safety features such as airbags, crumple zones and stability control (the first for a car of this class) - Electronic Stability Control is only optional on the Toyota Camry and not even available on the Honda Accord.

For accident avoidance, it has lock brakes (ABS), traction control systems and electronic brake distribution system (EBD).

PROS

• Extremely high safety ratings and features
• Very spacious interior
• Comes with more convenience features than other vehicles of its class

CONS

• Bland exterior styling

Price range comparisons

The Automatic retails at around R225 000 and the Manual transmision at R214 000.

Remember to add R1350 to the price if you are taking one of the two metallic finishes.

Prices as compared to other cars in the same target market:
The Hyunday Sonata can be compared in its class to the Toyota Camry and the Honda Accord as well as the Mazda 6. The Toyota Camry is not available in South Africa any more, so let’s just compare prices with the Honda Accord and the Mazda 6 2.3L Individual.

The Honda Accord Manual Type S retails for R239 500 and the Exec retails for R260 000. 

The Mazda 6 2.3L Individual starts at From R 253,900 (incl.VAT)

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This entry was posted on Saturday, January 19th, 2008 at 3:22 pm and is filed under Cars. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.