2012 Hyundai Sonata Limited Video

2012 Hyundai Sonata Limited Video Transcript

-Okay. The Sonata as you know competes against the Fusion, the Camry, the Accord, cars that are household names and that category by the way has turned out to be kind of a bellwether, a major battle ground if not the biggest as the automotive industry recovers coming out of the recession. This is a very serious car to consider. The GPS Navigation System, nothing new here we've seen this a hundred times, it's good, it's workable, in fact check some of our other recent Hyundai and Kia Navigation videos to see what this is all about. I'm not gonna spend too much time on it. One thing I do wanna point out while you do have voice command on this system, you don't have the UVO System. -Command please. -Find address. -Find address. The city, please. -San Francisco. -Please select the respected line where it starts out-- -One. This not seemed Hyundai madness, where I say the line number and it doesn't get it. They don't have this well-honed the UVO system is much more intelligent, more sophisticated. This is kind of old school voice command. As you can see it works fine. Let's talk about our media choices now. This system has the dimension audio systems. So whatever you're listening too, this it the top system Hyundai offers. It's 400 watts, it's got an external sub with its own amplifier and multiple channels of amplification to the main speakers around the cab and you've also got a bunch of DSP settings as you can see right there designed by Kim Pullman whoever he is. I'm sure I'll get e-mail from you, he is some legendary audio engineer but I never heard of him. Your sources, AM/FM and HD ability on the system, you got satellite radio and notice you've got a good but the imperfect text display here. They seemed to have enough real estate to call out more of each text tag but instead they flip and rotate them, I hate that and that's distracting too. I wanna see the name of the songs, it's too long to fit in one line, I gotta wait until that refreshes. And of course you got the Hyundai KF system of doing iPod or USB, the siamese cable you've gotta use down here which gets you into the aux and USB together to go to the iPod or just ram and aux in there by itself or a USB drive in there by itself. -And as of today's taping with the iPhone 5 still a few days away, the remains to be seen how that device will or won't work with these cars. -Notice one thing I like about this entire system whether you're in NAV or Media or what have you, really great touch screen response. These guys still rule the world in terms of screen response and the processor following what you've asked it to do. Now, one choice only on the gear box on this car, a very common these days, 6 speed automatic with a gate which I appreciate and paddles. You've got every possible way of shifting this guy. You can go into this paddle mode which is gonna give you a different response. You can influence it further from there. You can also hit it here on the stick. This is a nicely laid out transmission for anybody's personal preference. Over here is the active eco button. This puts the car into an extremely eco friendly mode, sipping gas obviously that does not include auto start-stop that has not implemented on this car. Okay, in the Engine Bay, a nice collection of technology especially for a sub 30 grand car, turbo charging and direct-injection. Sound familiar? That's what Ford does in eco boost. Now here Hyundai does it as well, again, big volumes-- these two companies just starting to get the ball rolling heavily on popularly priced GDI plus turbo vehicles. Specifically, two leader turbo in-line 4 sitting side settle driving the front wheels off pretty conventional in that respect. The output is 274 horsepower, 269 foot pounds of torque, nice even numbers there it's this 3400 pound car to 60 in about 6 and a half seconds, a good respectable number while delivering 2234 MPG. Now notice that 34 is a full 6 shot of today's magic number of 40. Skeptically cars these size don't reach 40 unless there's somewhere electrified but they are kind of in the low side of the 30's, I'd like to see him tweak that up a little. Now, the Sonata is an odd bag of drive mode. First of all, if you're in standard drive with active eco on like this, pretty sedates stuff. None of the stuff adjusts the suspension by the way, you got a single mode kind of a standard steel-based suspension but the power train is, you know, a leisurely an eco mode like you'd expect. When I turn it off, I gotta tell you, I don't feel a real big difference in sharpness, I mean, I'm honest but not a real big difference in personality. That's very different when I put this thing over in the shiftable gate over here on the shifter, that's not just the sport mode, that's like a crazy red line mode. It holds every gear almost all the way up to the clock. It's kinda weird in a car like this that has really no performance pretensions and has a kind of a soft suspension. It's not wallowy but there's something firmer cutting edge or a nice edge about it. So, that's a weird sport mode to me. Now, of course at that point if you're shifting, that makes sense. So I'm getting on the paddles here on the shifts or, you know, nice and quick. Overall is I think you've heard me say before. This is one of my go-to cars when someone comes to me and says, "I need a new car, what should I buy?" They didn't say a sports car, they didn't say compact SUV or cruiser or they didn't say anything else. They just need a new car. This is one of my favorites, I like the overall refinement, I like the value, I like the handling in performance within its means, I prefer the Kia Optima for looks, it's basically the same platform underneath but this is one of a better decision you can make when you just need a car. A Sonata SE Turbo basis at about 257 but the NAV and Sun roof package at almost 3,000, you want those to go Cnet's style with delivery and all gets you at that door a little under 29.

2012 Hyundai Sonata SE 2.0T Prices

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Store	Certified rating	Inventory	Price
Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price From Edmunds.com	Rate this store See store profile	Not in stock	$24,745.00
Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price From Edmunds.com	Rate this store See store profile	Not in stock	$24,745.00