Hyundai Sonata

Overview

Hyundai launched the new Sonata in 2012 and have done a great job with the new Sonata. The new Hyundai Sonata takes the cake when it comes to the exterior looks. It has a classy and distinguished profile owing to the “Fluidic” design concept from Hyundai. The swept back huge headlamps and chromed front grille sporting the Hyundai logo combined with angular looking fog lamps integrated into the bumpers gives the new Sonata a very aggressive and stylish front end. The rear has a very upmarket and stylish design which gels extremely well with the rest of the car. The car has sleek lines and the door handles are beautifully integrated into the swooping cut on the doors. The new Hyundai Sonata gets 10 spoke 17 inch alloy shod with 215/55 tyres which add to the sportiness of the car. The new Sonata has been constructed extremely well while the fit, finish and paint quality is just top notch.

The new Sonata has a cavernous cabin area and will easily accommodate the tallest of passengers inside. It has large glass windows which gives you a fresh and airy feel inside. The seats are extremely comfortable and offer excellent support to the body and they are also ventilated as with a touch of a button you can cool or heat the seats. The driver seat is a 10 way adjustable seat which is best in class. The steering as the audio controls, cruise controls, trip meter, Bluetooth telephony and looks great clad in leather and rubber. The new Sonata has dual tone dashboard with a sporty looking center console full of features with shiny audio controls and faux wood finish panels. It also sports 2 12V sockets, AUX/USB connectors, reverse camera. There are plenty of storage areas inside and the boot space is excellent and slightly larger than its outgoing model.

The new Sonata brings only one engine and does away with the diesel unit and is now available in a petrol engine variant only. The new engine is Hyundai’s first direct-injection 2.4 liter 4-cylinder GDI unit which produces 198 BHP at 6300 RPM and maximum torque of 250 NM at 4250 RPM. It is available in Manual Transmission and Automatic Transmission. The MT version has a good gearbox which shifts smoothly and is easy to drive in the city and the highway performance is excellent. The AT version offers a good drive but is not as spirited as the MT variant. There is plenty of torque and you can feel it as you run the car through the gears in either of the engine variants on the new Hyundai Sonata. ARAI has certified the Sonata to deliver a maximum fuel efficiency of 13.9 kmpl for the MT variant and 14.8 for the AT variant of the new Sonata.

The newer Hyundai Sonata brings a suspension setup which has been primarily tuned for comfort. Like its predecessor it doesn’t have a sporty package. It glides over bumps and potholes and manages to provide a very comfortable drive owing to its softer suspension tune. It is not a corner carver and doesn’t inspire confidence to push it on the twisties. Hyundai’s focus was on ensuring maximum rear passenger comfort as this car is most likely chauffeur driven hence they haven’t built the car to please the enthusiasts. At Rs 18.5 lakh for manual version and Rs 20.6 lakh for the automatic, the new Sonata is good value for money. For a detailed review read below

Interior

Like the exterior design, the cabin fascia and other parts also get the Fluidic treatment and needless to say, the effect is classy. This is one vehicle has a lot to boast about and will definitely give salesmen an upper edge when it comes to selling this model to prospective owners. The Sonata has a modern and uber cool cabin without going over the board. It has a sense of clutter-less feel and premium touches can be found in abundance – the chrome and wooden inserts for example!

The feature list is endless – from heated and cooled front and rear seats (manual model gets only rear ones) to wireless entry and start-stop (manual gets keyless entry), the Sonata has almost everything you would need and want. That said, I sorely missed a rear manual blind and found the arm-rest to be too long when flipped down. Overall plastic and leather quality is superb though at places, we could sense cost-cutting or an overlook by the team responsible for designing the interiors – for example, open the glove-box and the plastic quality is a bit of the let-down.

Exterior

The Sonata simply looks premium, modern, elegant and sophisticated from every single angle that you and I can lay our eyes on it from. Giving company to the Fluidic Design is the fact that the Sonata is a huge car dimension wise and this will go down well with those who believe in ‘bigger is better’. The swept back headlamps are huge and so is the chromed grille with angular looking fog lamps doing the honours below them. The chiselled bonnet has prominent lines flowing down into the grille while muscular angle comes in from the fact that the lower part of the either headlamps has lines running down into the lower part of the front bumper.

Infact, this lower part has a thinner centre air-dam as compared to its sides which hints at aggression! Clever and sporty. The side profile of the Sonata isn’t boring as well. A crisp and easily visible shoulder line that goes up and meets the tail lamps and the swooping roof lends a coupe like appearance to this premium sedan. The rear end of the Sonata gels in well with the whole design and though has cues taken from a few German premium sedans, does look very upmarket and stylish. Infact, the twin exhausts on either side of the bumper hint at its sporty intentions.

Mileage Running Cost

The new Sonata gets only a 2.4-litre direct injection GDI petrol engine. Expect about 10 kmpl in the automatic version and about 11-12 kmpl in the manual version. There is no diesel yet but compared to rivals the Sonata has decent efficiency.

Comfort Suspension

A typical customer in this segment wants to a plush vehicle, one that isolates the undulations of the road from the cabin and in this regard, the Sonata does the job perfectly. The suspension gets the usual bits of Macpherson struts with coil spring up front and a multilink set-up at the rear but what’s important and unique is that at both the front and rear, the suspension also gets amplitude selective dampers (ASDs) – the reason why the new Sonata behaves well in almost all driving scenarios.

Engine Performance

The new Sonata gets a 2.4-litre direct injection GDI petrol engine that is good on power, performance and overall refinement. At close to 200 horses, the engine has a lot of potential and this combined with a healthy 255Nm of torque means there is always punch on tap from the engine.I drove the 6 speed manual first in Chennai’s start-stop traffic and was impressed with its precise feel and direct shifts – no complaints here.

There is enough juice is low end speeds which is a boon for slow city traffic – this is majorly due to the ‘Dual Continuously Variable Valve Timing’ or the D-VTVT that makes sure the surge of power is there across most of the rev range. Out on the traffic, the engine didn’t lose its breath at high triple digit speeds and settled into a refined state easily. However, when pushed hard, say beyond 4000 revs, it does make itself felt easily with a grunty note. In automatic mode, when the revs rise easily, this can be an issue though. The automatic is a 6-speed one and though cannot match up to the likes of the DSG gearboxes

Braking Safety

One of the biggest strengths of the new Sonata is the way it feels on the move. The earlier Sonata was simply too soft in nature which meant the slightest of spirited driving (like changing lanes at high speed) had it wallowing all over the place. Do the same with this one and it responds back brilliant.  Not only is the high speed behaviour much better than the outgoing model, spirited driving keeps things well under control. On the safety front, Hyundai has packed in electronic stability program in addition to the usual bits of ABS with EBD.