The drive by wire is just a waiting experience. There is a delay while it considers your request. This is a 4-cylinder. It sounded like a 4-cylinder, but I visually verified. Half of the space under the hood is empty space. That was a surprise. A person could fit between the engine and the firewall.
Apparently, if you leave something in the back seats, you cannot lock the doors.
I can report that the seats are very uncomfortable. I think they were designed for a person with a width of 14 inches. There is a seam that painfully runs down the underside middle of each leg. The bolsters are very high, causing severe discomfort for my hips. When you get into the seat, apparently it has no intent of letting you go. Getting in and out is unpleasant, because you must climb out of the seat. There is a metal bracket above the lumbar,. That metal bracket set out to make a lasting impression on my back. The headrest may work if the seat back is in the recline position, so I used the crow bar to straighten the headrest (which inexplicably has no forward/rear adjustment). The front of my left shoulder has a mark from the B-pillar, but at least the seat belt didn't rub my arm raw. There is a decorative little thing between the front seats that gouges my my hip. The gouger is too low and small for an arm rest, nor is it in any way padded. On egress, the front of this thing has a cruelly curved edge that digs painfully into my hip. The steering wheel is rough on the hands, and the wheel jerks with every small thing in the road. There is no good place to place your hands on the wheel. I'm not sure if this is by design or out of ignorance. The ONLY way to rest your legs is by twisting your left foot and placing it under the brake pedal, which is not safe, then to twist your right leg and place the right foot under your left leg. The drive wore me out. My butt, hands, arms, back, legs, and neck are sore.
I think my Fiero would outrun this thing. In sport mode, the hyundead can peel out on start, but the car just doesn't move. It's a 6-speed auto, and always in the wrong gear. It wants to start in second. The speed limit for the drive was 75MPH. I always thought of the prairie as being mostly flat, but this thing makes a rise seem like a mountain. It would downshift to fourth, and still couldn't hold the speed limit. When it downshifted, the RPMs would shoot to 6,000, which seems to be as high as they can go in fourth, although the redline is 8,000. Every time it downshifted, the car would say something like, "What did you say? I didn't understand. Please speak clearly." When rolling downhill, the car doesn't come out of gear, so it hangs, forcing me to manually shift to neutral. Even in neutral, this car has what seems to be rolling resistance. I eventually just manually shifted for everything. Most of the drive, I left it in fourth, which is very noisy, with a sound like those motors in the old cassette players on rewind. Periodically, the car would prompt me that I could get better fuel mileage in a higher gear.
The brakes are a safety issue. If you get in a hard stop situation, the car brakes erratically. Actually, it behaves as if there are no rear brakes. During hard stops, you must fight the wheel.
The air bag light came on, early in the drive out. As a safety feature, this disengages the cruise control. I called service, and they said that the sensor probably got wet. Interesting, as I've seen nothing wet. Also, the car will audibly let you know when you are within 300 miles of a service facility. ANY service facility. The dang thing wouldn't shut up. After about 80 miles, the car advised me audibly that I had less than half a tank remaining.
Several times, I heard the alert, "HUD activated." This car has no HUD. Sometimes, it would say, "Command not recognized" or "Feature not available". It kept prompting me, "would you like to hear a musical selection?" Every now and again, the car would decide to tell me that "the air pressure in the tires is inequal". When it gets this wild hair, the information center changes to show tire pressure info, but the actual numeric values are in probably 8-points. It would do this for about 5 minutes. Unless it's an emergency, it should leave me alone. I really don't appreciate having my gauges hijacked.
The GPS regularly prompts with advertisements for places as you pass, but the worst thing was that it started asking my destination, so that it could make my trip "more enjoyable".
I had the windows open a bit to keep the car cool, but it rolls the windows up when you get above 60MPH. There was a voice message for this, but I was furious. It is not possible to unlock/open the driver's door while moving. At one point, I tried to adjust my butt on the seat, but couldn't, because the belt was too tight, so I tried to release the belt. Nothing doing. There was an audible buzzer. I had to bring the car to a complete stop, just to adjust my butt on the seat.
If you don't keep both hands on the wheel, after a few minutes, the car sabotages your velocity, turns the cruise off, and loudly demands, "Hello? Are you there?". It then advises you to place both hands on the wheel.
The latch on the rear seats wouldn't lock in place, so the seats rattled and clacked, the whole way out.
I did get the doors locked, and set the alarm. It makes a pipsqueak, girlish sound. Very embarrasing. When I left the event, the car wouldn't unlock. I had to call to have it remotely unlocked. The problem was that the battery was dead. It is very difficult to get into the car, when the battery is dead, because there is no slot for the key. I got into the engine compartment, and put a jumper on the battery. The car still had to be unlocked remotely. Now, the keyless remotes don't work. The battery was dead, because the car had some alert or other going. That was all they could tell me. Well, the alert was obviously ineffective, or it was lost in the profusion of other alerts. When I tried to start the car, I had to wait 30 minutes for a "system check". Yeah. The remote control reset the mirrors, necessitating that I waste more time manually adjusting the mirrors.
I guess this delay was fortuitous. While I was waiting, I removed the door panels and unplugged the speakers. I got the dash apart far enough to unplug the carputer, but later discovered that the car won't start without this device. I found more speakers in the dash, and unplugged them. I couldn't find the buzzer. The car also won't start if you unplug the information center. I left the dash apart, in case there were further distrubances. I removed the torture device between the front seats, and replaced the device with a box of tissues, which was a pressed fit. I unplugged the power mirrors. Since the keyless entry no longer worked, I unplugged the lock actuators and removed the rod for the locking mechanism.
The interior sets a new low for cheap. The materials seem to be the cheapest available. The textures and colors on the various interior pieces do not match. At every bump, the visors would plop down. I eventually removed them. On one bump, the sunglasses compartment on the ceiling fell to the floor. There is a black plastic piece that fits on the shift lever. That came off. While I had the door panels off, I was rather alarmed about how flimsy everything is. There were no sound deadening materials in the door, and no jute to keep the elements out. No wonder everything is so loud in the cabin! I should've filled the doors with Great Stuff. I used some pieces of foam tape around the rear seat mounts to quiet the rattling. I also put some foam tape on the doors to cut down on air leakage. I ran duct tape over the gaps on the hood to reduce wind noise. I looked for a way to choose the info displayed by the information center, but couldn't find any way to do this. There is a user section, but it's for presets, and most of them were greyed out. There are no cup holders, nor does the design of the interior allow for even placing a cup somewhere other than the floor. There are no suitable flat surfaces; rather, there are useless "things" that look like they were borrowed from a baby mobile, and mostly just clutter the interior. The large dash is suitable for...collecting dust.
Whether inside or outside, the panels are just there. The dash and door panels, for example, do not really meet up. The exterior door panels do not line up. The fuel door doesn't have an even gap all the way around. The gap for the hood isn't even from grille to windshield, nor is it the same on both sides. Even the end on the turn signal stalk looks like it came from a larger turn signal stalk. The interior gaps between the trim and the windshield are inconsistent. I thought these traits were endemic to the 1980's cars.
On the positive side, the suspension is tight, although the ride is somewhat more jarring than the Fiero's ride. Forward visibility is fine, but side visibility is abysmal. The steering wheel is centered on the driver's seat. It is also a positive that the driver has total control over the rearview mirror. This is probably the only item on the entire car about which this can be said. Even the glove box has an electronic release.
On the way home, the engine changed sounds and quit running rather abruptly. The information center turned red, and there were still audible alerts from somewhere. It is so great that, after the engine self-destructs, the car FINALLY tells you that there is a problem. I got the transmission into neutral as soon as the engine changed sounds, which was probably a good thing. I had to wait for a ride. They gave me a Malibu to get home. Since the rental place was closed, I had the Malibu today.
The hyundead must be the most obnoxious vehicle I've driven recently. Had it gotten me home, I'd have described it as basic transportation; instead, it failed in its primary purpose. I want to repeat that. Transportation is a car's primary purpose. From my point of view, the car basically holds the occupants hostage, and only operates if the occupants agree to a complete loss of privacy and control, as well as being subjected to what amounts to brain washing. The constant caucaphony of alerts is very distracting for a driver. It should only be possible for a single alert to sound at any given time. This hyundead was a safety risk to all drivers and all occupants. It was not economically viable, nor was it ecologically viable. In light of the engine failure, the various gadget failures, the interior falling apart, and the service calls, I'd say it wasn't financially viable. It's great that the manual is thin, but it contains no useful information. I was unable to find any redeeming features about this car.
Had I been doing a vehicle test, I'd have given the chassis a B, the fit and finish a C, and everything else an F.
