Starting with the positive:
Considering its size it actually had a lot of usable cargo volume especially if you folded the rear passenger and front passenger seats down as much as you could.
To maximize pass through cargo length one should fold the rear passenger seat down, slide the front passenger seat up, and then lay its back all the way down.
We were able to haul all the lumber for our Custom Island Cabinet and were able to carry the boxes for our Ikea Hemnes Cabinet with Panel/Glass Doors (which were both long and decently wide) in this little car.
I really should have taken pictures of that...
A+ in usable hauling space for this 5-door hatchback.
Also, the rear seats were, to quote the late George Carlin, "minimally exceptional". They appeared to have enough comfort and space for our up to one hour drives but are also not likely a place an adult human wants to spend more than an hour at a time.
That said, things kind of go down hill form there.
On the topic of hauling space the rear hatch opens very high compared to the floor of the rear cargo space meaning everything needs to be lifted over the quite sizable lip. My assumption is this has to deal with how it was designed and the rear bumper, but it really would have been better and nicer to have the cargo space floor be even with the bottom of the rear hatch.
As for the driving details, they are not impressive.
Regarding engine and transmission we have a 1.6L inline four cylinder engine with 137 HP @ 6300 RPM and 123 lb.-ft. of torque @ 4850 RPM (per the manufacturer). Considering that this car weighs a maximum from factory of 2,635 lbs. from factory it is reasonably peppy to drive in the way that all small light cars with all but the most anemic of engines or extremely poorly sorted transmissions tend to be.
This car can get out of its own way if you ask it to. You do have to ask though.
Light acceleration 2400 RPM upshift in D non eco. Heavy acceleration upshift 6500 RPM in D non eco, which is 250 PRM short of its self-reported red line.
When cruising we saw 2000 RPM at 60 MPH.
Our other notes regarding engine and transmission include:
Very little delay between putting foot down and engine
response. Less secondary the more insistent you were about accelerating. (Not sure what my wife meant by "secondary" here... maybe this will be edited later...)
Shifting in manual mode decently responsive for gear change.
Engine braking almost non existent.
Brakes are adequate and work for this light car. Do not except any brake feel or linear progression from the brake pedal though.
The handling was disappointing in terms of steering wheel input required and U-turns. A 90 degree turn from a stop required a full 360 degree turn of the steering wheel (think lots of rotation in parking lots).
Also we had occasion to make a U-turn across three lanes of roadway and this wound up being a three point turn... We were trying to do the tightest turn possible, not impressed.
Last bit of driving experience, the blind spots were absolutely dreadful!
Visibility on the
rear right is terrible. Terrible.
The designers were apparently trying to tick all possible boxes they could in blind spot creation without making the sides on this a single panel of sheet metal.
The C pillars inside have a lot of plastic to them. The D pillars have this big up swoop and are quite wide. One of the automotive world's more useless windows is included between the C and D pillar for reasons.
The rear headrests are large and occupy a ton of rear visibility real-estate and the on top of the the rear hatch has a small window with tons of side plastic cladding.
The real cherry on top of this "you won't see anything out the rear or sides" sundae is that the roof line takes a fairly aggressive slope down to help with the severe bludgeoning of rear visibility.
This car is a prime candidate for blind spot monitoring and 360 camera views (which may not make an appearance at its low $15k - $17k base price points, if at all in this car).
There was a radio and HVAC controls. They worked. There is nothing more to talk about in the center stack. This is very economy car.
On the bright side you can, for the most part, see out the front of it. The A pillars are more or less the same thickness as s standard fare these days and the dashboard is the same higher than it probably needs to be. The aggressively raked windshield (good for fuel efficiency) and high dash do make for an awkward sun visor situation though.
Headlights are ho-hum non-projection halogens with all the disadvantages that entails.
The cup / bottle holder situation was generally more or less a failure.
The final image above shows the tiny bit of pizazz the automaker attempted to add to this otherwise very cheap car.
The gauges appear to have blue back illumination to them!
Except they have it at daytime too and if that caught your eye and you looked closely you got to realize it was a pixelated print on the gauge cluster paper.
As always, questions and comments welcome!
I really tried my best to make this no thrills economy car at least be entertaining to read about.
And if you want to read about another Hyundai I was disappointed with click here.
Lastly, lest you think I hate all Hyundai vehicles I actually kind of enjoyed this one.
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