bradc
1 AYC Bar
What follows is a review of the worst post-2000 car ever to be made.
My work Corolla was crashed into today and is most likely written off, the chassis is bent, the left quarter panel is stopping the left rear door from opening, the boot floor is bent, etc.
So I now have a courtesy car. It is one of these in an almost gold/beige colour that has faded terribly:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyundai_Verna
It has a 1.3L gutless model engine:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyundai_Alpha_engine
I find the description of "It was a modern SOHC 3-valve straight-4" to be slightly misleading at the least and.....well perhaps modern is an incorrect word entirely. Poor is a better word to use. Asthmatic is another word that could be used. Unfortunately I can't tell you how high it revs because in the 4257mm of wasted space between the front and rear number plates Hyundai couldn't find room for a Tacho.
They also couldn't find room for:
Electric windows
Electric side view mirrors
Any kind of cabin ergonomics
Measurable torque
A boot that shuts and actually closes unless you slam it
Floor carpets that stay intact
Steering wheel that doesn't fall apart
A gearbox that has gears THAT ACTUALLY LINE UP WITH WHERE THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO BE, it is so sloppy that while in any gear you can move the shifter approx 50mm in any direction and sometimes much more depending on the gear.
However it has 3 redeeming features:
A clutch
Hangers for the rear boot cover that actually work, unlike the Corolla
Air Con
One thing that I can't beleive is just how vague the gear shifter is. From it's natural resting place in 5th it can be moved a good 60mm to the left, in fact past the point where 3rd would be. It can be moved North-East (towards the drivers knee) by about 100mm. For reasons I don't understand the car actually stays in gear while you are doing this. HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE? It is the same in every gear, making 2nd-3rd changes and 5th-4th changes a 2 second affair because you have no idea if you are going to go up from 2nd, across to the right 50-ish millimetres and end up in 1st, 3rd, 5th, neutral, or possibly a point where no gear actually exists.
Because there is no tacho it is difficult to match your revs on downshifts accurately. This is a problem when each gear physically overlaps the next gear by at least 40mm and if you do mis-shift into the wrong gear, being a 1.3L it will not have enough power to handle skipping a few gears. I also have no idea how high it revs, but what I can tell you is that in 1st this happens:
At 10kmh = feeling like it is about to stall and vibrating like mad. It could perhaps be a 4 cylinder diesel not firing on cylinder number 1.
20kmh to 30kmh = not much engine noise or vibration. You do in fact have time to ponder this due to the lacklustre performance from the engine.
40kmh to 50kmh = sounds like it will explode. Massive engine noise and vibration, still not really accelerating all that much.
52kmh to 55kmh = bouncing off the rev limiter at 52kmh, magnify the noise at 45kmh by a factor of 2. It will bounce until 55kmh
Flat shift into 2nd
55kmh to 65kmh = not much engine noise or vibration. You do in fact have time to ponder this even more than in first gear due to the lacklustre performance from the engine.
70kmh to the 90kmh rev limiter = just as painful as first but this time around it takes at least twice as long to accelerate through the rev range so the horrible noise and vibration lasts longer
Spend two to three seconds fumbling around trying to determine whether you are in 3rd, 5th, possibly 1st or even possibly a gear that is stuck at the other end of the gearbox that noone in the history of motoring has been able to engage.
3rd! Success. More vibration and noise and very little acceleration.
But lets get back to first. Every other car I've driven will let you lift up the clutch a bit and will naturally creep forward without feeling like it is going to stall. The Hyundai Accent does not do this. You have to rev it up to creep forward, even on a slight slope downhill. This is further compounded by the lack of a tacho as it is impossible to tell if you are at 1000rpm and only doing a bit of harm to the clutch or 2000rpm and completely mullering the clutch. The engine doesn't have any torque at all, so you can't tell the rpm by forward movement.
At least the clutch has held up so far. It also seems to be quite happy engaging again after flat shifting from 1st to 2nd. I am unable to flat shift between 2nd and 3rd because of the previously mentioned problems of taking many seconds to change from 2nd into 3rd. I ran out of road trying to get to the top in 3rd so I haven't tried flat shifting from 3rd into 4th yet. I will possibly need the distance between Auckland and Hamilton to find this out.
That brings me onto another moan. On the motorway there was at first little wind noise, I was actually quite surprised. Or it might have been mostly blocked out by the engine noise. Either way it was quieter than I expected. However after 10km of driving there was suddenly a whole heap of noise. I found the culprit quickly, the drivers window glass had dropped down a bit. So I wound it up (see above point about no electric windows). About 5 minutes later it happened again, but this time after finding out the drivers glass had dropped a few mm in this time, the problem wasn't fixed. The back windows, yes that is right, windowS had slipped down. Because I was driving at 90kmh as the engine is unbearable at my usual cruising speed at 110kmh I was unable to wind the windows up, so I had to suffer with both rear windows slightly down for the remaining 25km trip home.
Speaking of 110kmh, it was simply too uncomfortable to drive at 110kmh. The steering wheel vibrated horribly, the engine noise was the automotive equivilent of fingernails on a chalkboard and the roar coming from the tyres on the road could not be drowned out by the terrible stereo with 2 crappy speakers that I firmly beleive were stolen from the insides of a PC and are normally used to make the cheerful Beep that comes from a PC when it is turned on.
I shudder to think of how bad the Auto gearbox would be connected to this abomination. Now you wouldn't know how fast the engine was going, or what the car was likely to do next. At least with the manual you have a choice about how fast you are going to get there.....actually no you don't, regardless of how quickly you want to get anywhere, it will be slower than what the online map website suggests a truck will take to get to the intended location. Assuming of course that the owner of such a terrible car would have friends. I personally will never be able to form a friendly relationship with any Hyundai driver for the rest of time. Where has that sideways 8 gone?
It gets worse. The interior is the saddest place in the world to be. The plastics are so cheap and hard it is amazing. Rocks are softer than the plastics, I punched the dashboard to confirm this theory and my hand was sore for a few minutes afterwards. The dashboard is really hard! If you are ever unfortunate enough to be in an accent, do not touch the dashboard unless you are a sadist or are a fan of self mutilation.
The steering wheel, even though the car is only 8 years old is falling to pieces. It is made of rubber that has hardened and pieces of rubber just fall off every time you try to take a corner. The handbrake lever lulls you into a false sense of quality with the shape of it, and even when your hand is wrapped around it the shape is actually quite comfortable, however the arseholes who built the car beleived it was important to install a thin piece of ultra sharp plastic to the bottom of the lever that is specifically designed to cut your fingers when one removes their hand from the handbrake.
Getting back to the steering wheel, the car is extremely nervous and quick to react just off centre so it is a must to have both hands on the wheel at all times, yet this is impossible as the steering wheel is pointed at about where the hour hand would be on a clock if the time was 1:30. This is compounded by the fact that if you are holding your hands on the wheel in the normal way, ie at 9 and 3 oclock, you would now have your hands at 10:30 and 4:30.
This however is made impossible by the fact that the seats are the worst seats ever made in the history of sitting humans. The seat bottoms are incredibly flat and uncomfortable. They are clearly designed for a 200kg man. The backs are similarly wide. Fortunately the car is not capable of cornering at high speeds as the seats would not hold a human covered in wet glue in place. They are also positioned miles off the floor so that you feel as if you are perched on top of the car and not actually in the car. I can only but assume that this is what it feels like to be driving an old Chariot or Voyager or similar early MPV. The back of the seats are not only wide but also flat and there is no bolster below where my rib cage ends. In turn this means that, combined with no lumber support, the bottom half of your torso is free to move whereever it wants to around a corner. I now know how girls feel when they aren't wearing a bra.
What tops all of this off and is ultimately the final straw for me is that someone clearly thought back in 2001 that this car was a good choice to waste $22k or so on. They were not mentally capable of walking to a Toyota dealership or a Mitsi dealership, or heck even a Honda dealership and pick up a one or two year old Corolla/Lancer/Civic that would have been substantially better in every single way, all the time while having considerably better resale value, build quality and having electrically operated windows and side mirrors as features just to begin with.
Lastly, finally and to finish this car review off, the speedo goes up to 200kmh. That is about as optimistic as Adolf Hitler thinking to himself in about March to April 1945:
You know, I reckon we are going to win this thing.
My work Corolla was crashed into today and is most likely written off, the chassis is bent, the left quarter panel is stopping the left rear door from opening, the boot floor is bent, etc.
So I now have a courtesy car. It is one of these in an almost gold/beige colour that has faded terribly:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyundai_Verna
It has a 1.3L gutless model engine:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyundai_Alpha_engine
I find the description of "It was a modern SOHC 3-valve straight-4" to be slightly misleading at the least and.....well perhaps modern is an incorrect word entirely. Poor is a better word to use. Asthmatic is another word that could be used. Unfortunately I can't tell you how high it revs because in the 4257mm of wasted space between the front and rear number plates Hyundai couldn't find room for a Tacho.
They also couldn't find room for:
Electric windows
Electric side view mirrors
Any kind of cabin ergonomics
Measurable torque
A boot that shuts and actually closes unless you slam it
Floor carpets that stay intact
Steering wheel that doesn't fall apart
A gearbox that has gears THAT ACTUALLY LINE UP WITH WHERE THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO BE, it is so sloppy that while in any gear you can move the shifter approx 50mm in any direction and sometimes much more depending on the gear.
However it has 3 redeeming features:
A clutch
Hangers for the rear boot cover that actually work, unlike the Corolla
Air Con
One thing that I can't beleive is just how vague the gear shifter is. From it's natural resting place in 5th it can be moved a good 60mm to the left, in fact past the point where 3rd would be. It can be moved North-East (towards the drivers knee) by about 100mm. For reasons I don't understand the car actually stays in gear while you are doing this. HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE? It is the same in every gear, making 2nd-3rd changes and 5th-4th changes a 2 second affair because you have no idea if you are going to go up from 2nd, across to the right 50-ish millimetres and end up in 1st, 3rd, 5th, neutral, or possibly a point where no gear actually exists.
Because there is no tacho it is difficult to match your revs on downshifts accurately. This is a problem when each gear physically overlaps the next gear by at least 40mm and if you do mis-shift into the wrong gear, being a 1.3L it will not have enough power to handle skipping a few gears. I also have no idea how high it revs, but what I can tell you is that in 1st this happens:
At 10kmh = feeling like it is about to stall and vibrating like mad. It could perhaps be a 4 cylinder diesel not firing on cylinder number 1.
20kmh to 30kmh = not much engine noise or vibration. You do in fact have time to ponder this due to the lacklustre performance from the engine.
40kmh to 50kmh = sounds like it will explode. Massive engine noise and vibration, still not really accelerating all that much.
52kmh to 55kmh = bouncing off the rev limiter at 52kmh, magnify the noise at 45kmh by a factor of 2. It will bounce until 55kmh
Flat shift into 2nd
55kmh to 65kmh = not much engine noise or vibration. You do in fact have time to ponder this even more than in first gear due to the lacklustre performance from the engine.
70kmh to the 90kmh rev limiter = just as painful as first but this time around it takes at least twice as long to accelerate through the rev range so the horrible noise and vibration lasts longer
Spend two to three seconds fumbling around trying to determine whether you are in 3rd, 5th, possibly 1st or even possibly a gear that is stuck at the other end of the gearbox that noone in the history of motoring has been able to engage.
3rd! Success. More vibration and noise and very little acceleration.
But lets get back to first. Every other car I've driven will let you lift up the clutch a bit and will naturally creep forward without feeling like it is going to stall. The Hyundai Accent does not do this. You have to rev it up to creep forward, even on a slight slope downhill. This is further compounded by the lack of a tacho as it is impossible to tell if you are at 1000rpm and only doing a bit of harm to the clutch or 2000rpm and completely mullering the clutch. The engine doesn't have any torque at all, so you can't tell the rpm by forward movement.
At least the clutch has held up so far. It also seems to be quite happy engaging again after flat shifting from 1st to 2nd. I am unable to flat shift between 2nd and 3rd because of the previously mentioned problems of taking many seconds to change from 2nd into 3rd. I ran out of road trying to get to the top in 3rd so I haven't tried flat shifting from 3rd into 4th yet. I will possibly need the distance between Auckland and Hamilton to find this out.
That brings me onto another moan. On the motorway there was at first little wind noise, I was actually quite surprised. Or it might have been mostly blocked out by the engine noise. Either way it was quieter than I expected. However after 10km of driving there was suddenly a whole heap of noise. I found the culprit quickly, the drivers window glass had dropped down a bit. So I wound it up (see above point about no electric windows). About 5 minutes later it happened again, but this time after finding out the drivers glass had dropped a few mm in this time, the problem wasn't fixed. The back windows, yes that is right, windowS had slipped down. Because I was driving at 90kmh as the engine is unbearable at my usual cruising speed at 110kmh I was unable to wind the windows up, so I had to suffer with both rear windows slightly down for the remaining 25km trip home.
Speaking of 110kmh, it was simply too uncomfortable to drive at 110kmh. The steering wheel vibrated horribly, the engine noise was the automotive equivilent of fingernails on a chalkboard and the roar coming from the tyres on the road could not be drowned out by the terrible stereo with 2 crappy speakers that I firmly beleive were stolen from the insides of a PC and are normally used to make the cheerful Beep that comes from a PC when it is turned on.
I shudder to think of how bad the Auto gearbox would be connected to this abomination. Now you wouldn't know how fast the engine was going, or what the car was likely to do next. At least with the manual you have a choice about how fast you are going to get there.....actually no you don't, regardless of how quickly you want to get anywhere, it will be slower than what the online map website suggests a truck will take to get to the intended location. Assuming of course that the owner of such a terrible car would have friends. I personally will never be able to form a friendly relationship with any Hyundai driver for the rest of time. Where has that sideways 8 gone?
It gets worse. The interior is the saddest place in the world to be. The plastics are so cheap and hard it is amazing. Rocks are softer than the plastics, I punched the dashboard to confirm this theory and my hand was sore for a few minutes afterwards. The dashboard is really hard! If you are ever unfortunate enough to be in an accent, do not touch the dashboard unless you are a sadist or are a fan of self mutilation.
The steering wheel, even though the car is only 8 years old is falling to pieces. It is made of rubber that has hardened and pieces of rubber just fall off every time you try to take a corner. The handbrake lever lulls you into a false sense of quality with the shape of it, and even when your hand is wrapped around it the shape is actually quite comfortable, however the arseholes who built the car beleived it was important to install a thin piece of ultra sharp plastic to the bottom of the lever that is specifically designed to cut your fingers when one removes their hand from the handbrake.
Getting back to the steering wheel, the car is extremely nervous and quick to react just off centre so it is a must to have both hands on the wheel at all times, yet this is impossible as the steering wheel is pointed at about where the hour hand would be on a clock if the time was 1:30. This is compounded by the fact that if you are holding your hands on the wheel in the normal way, ie at 9 and 3 oclock, you would now have your hands at 10:30 and 4:30.
This however is made impossible by the fact that the seats are the worst seats ever made in the history of sitting humans. The seat bottoms are incredibly flat and uncomfortable. They are clearly designed for a 200kg man. The backs are similarly wide. Fortunately the car is not capable of cornering at high speeds as the seats would not hold a human covered in wet glue in place. They are also positioned miles off the floor so that you feel as if you are perched on top of the car and not actually in the car. I can only but assume that this is what it feels like to be driving an old Chariot or Voyager or similar early MPV. The back of the seats are not only wide but also flat and there is no bolster below where my rib cage ends. In turn this means that, combined with no lumber support, the bottom half of your torso is free to move whereever it wants to around a corner. I now know how girls feel when they aren't wearing a bra.
What tops all of this off and is ultimately the final straw for me is that someone clearly thought back in 2001 that this car was a good choice to waste $22k or so on. They were not mentally capable of walking to a Toyota dealership or a Mitsi dealership, or heck even a Honda dealership and pick up a one or two year old Corolla/Lancer/Civic that would have been substantially better in every single way, all the time while having considerably better resale value, build quality and having electrically operated windows and side mirrors as features just to begin with.
Lastly, finally and to finish this car review off, the speedo goes up to 200kmh. That is about as optimistic as Adolf Hitler thinking to himself in about March to April 1945:
You know, I reckon we are going to win this thing.
I do ~50,000km per year in it. I also happen to have a small collection of Legnums for the weekends.
