Agreed on above statement, same as my observations (with Toyota and Honda balance-shaft 4 bangers being the most refined). And having a smooth, quiet idle is the easy part that almost all manufacturers can achieve. The difficulty with 4's is achieving smoothness under load at high revs and sounding good doing it, even balance-shaft equipped engines have to be tailored for either smooth mid-range power or smooth high-end power.

Yes 4-cylinders are not for me for the most part as I've said before.

 

I'm of the same opinion and view the Camry and Accords as the best in NVH, barely acceptable in my opinion, certainly not unbearable.

 

FWIW, I also find the back of the Sonata to be unusable and rather unacceptable for anyone over 5'10". You make a good point CJ, in saying that the rear of this car is not very user-friendly in a class that is based around appliance-like practicality.

IMO the Sonata looks pretty good from the outside but that sloping roofline has a price, and it has come at the expense of rear headroom. I'm about 6' even and have to hunch down in the rear of the Sonata to avoid hitting my head on the ceiling.

I also agree with your comments about the interior...fairly standard for a car in this class, and certainly nothing to write home about.

Nice review.

 

Eh, I wouldn't say I'm biased one way or the other. I had quite a few kind words for the Sonata throughout my posts.

It looks good!

Not totally my style but it's not a bad looking car.

My few gripes had to do with some fit and finish and some ergonomic and space issues.

I drove a current gen Mazda3 about a month or so ago, and I thought that the interior materials were about as good as the Sonatas and that's saying something since the Sonata is in a class higher and the Sonata has had a lot of fanfare for being whatever.

I didn't like the texture of the 3's dash, but the quality of it was there. There were no gaps in the interior and the "rubbery" dash, at least had a softness and "give" to it. The Sonata's dash is entirely HARD plastic. Attractive texture and colors but it's hard no give plastic.

There are only 5 pieces of soft plastic in the interior. One piece on each door and one piece for the armrest in the center console. The rest of the interior is made up of acres of HARD plastic.

I don't mind but I just took note of that fact. The design of the interior is nice, but it's materials and "feel" aren't anything revolutionary as some would have you believe.

One thing that is really annoying to me are the blindspots. The sideview mirros are tiny and even when repositioned leave a lot of blindspots (a lot more than most cars). When I turn my head to look out the back window there's a huge "hump" behind the rear seats and it makes the view very compromised and small. This also affects looking out the rearview mirror. That's just not a good things. This is a car that needs a backup camera standard because it's impossible to see out of otherwise.

The fit and finish of the car isn't top rate. Quite a few dash pieces overlap/collide/gap. It's a sub-$20K car so that probably should be expected, but just know it's not all it's hyped up to be.

As I said in my review this car hasn't been driven before me. There were only 9 miles on it when I got it, so it probably came from the factory like this.

 

As far as my comments comparing the Sonata's rear accommodations to *Corolla* and *Civic* I stand by them. Look at the specs and the Corolla has 2 more inches of rear seat legroom than the Sonata.

As I said the amount of room upfront is ample, but the rear seats are compromised because of the sleek roofline.

 

Agreed that the sleek style compromised rear seat headroom to some degree (for those over 5'10").

Or as I said before:

"Sure, Hyundai traded some rear seat headroom for style and aerodynamics, but the sales success over the older boxier design speaks for itself. I'm sure there are some that wish the old Sonata body style still existed, but nobody that matters to Hyundai since they aren't real buyers."

The Civic and Corolla have much smaller passenger compartments and smaller trunks, very different cars. Since we are making unrelated comparisons with no impact on intended market for Sonata, the successful but very different IS/GS (headroom only in the case of the GS)/C-class/3-series all have equal or less rear seat space than the Civic, but these are expensive RWD sport sedans.

 

solid review. I like the shape of the new sonata and think its a solid competitor for its class. I am sure they will be filling the rental car lots soon enough. I rented the last generation sonata on a few trips back east and found them to be decent compared to the accord and camry rentals. It handled relatively well, had solid acceleration (v6) and had comfortable interior for a driver who is 6"5 300+lbs

 

The only problem I had with the last gen Sonata was the noisy V6. But the back seat was roomy and the fit and finish was nice. The new Sonata looks decent but some of the fit and finish could be better, imo

 

thanks!

I like the Mazda3's dash material, what I didn't like was the texture of it. The Sonata's material is harder, but the texture is better (and the colors are better as well).

The upper trim levels of the Sonata may have softer dash materials, but who knows. As far as base models, I think I would choose the Accord or Mazda6 over the Sonata. With the upper level models it might be more of a tossup between the Camry, Accord, and Sonata depending on interior quality.

But yeah you should check it out for yourself, and see what you think. Check out different trims and see if there is a big difference.

I myself couldn't get the car because of the poor visibility all around. I could maybe get a model with backup camera, but that's not gonna help on the highway when every car out there is in a blindspot...

 

nice review

I see alot of it around here in the sea of camry and accords and have wondered how it fares with the competitions.
I love what they did to the rear

I'm disappointed also to hear that the rear seats are not roomy for the class that it's in.

 

I saw a white sonata in the parking lot of the office this morning and it looks GREAT!!! Its a real head turner. The skin on this new Hyundai will send the toyota and honda guys back to the drawing board. Hyundai has proven that entry level family sedans can still be stylish. Toyota has shown us with the Venza recently that utility doesn't always have to be ugly, now they just need to jazz up the camry. The Accord could use a less flat nose