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Hyundai Sonata 6 cylinders or 4?
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Comments
I can't stress enough how week the 4 cyl felt. The sonata is a fairly large car. The 4 cyl just has to work too hard to move it. Just to keep up traffic from stop lights i was nearly flooring it.
I am confident that I would get no better mileage with the 4 cyl than the v6... except for perhaps a steady 60 mph cruise.
22K is a decenct price for a v6 ltd w/o nav. I paid 23K with nav...which i love!
In my opinion, unless you do a lot of hwy cruising buy the v6...besides gas prices are dropping quickly!
I am not racing people at stop lights. I just want to be able to move away from a light without people beeping at me or passing me angryly as I limp away from the light.
While it's acceleration may be "adequate". To achieve the "adequate" acceleration, the engine had to be flogged. I feel that this results in equal and quite possibly worse MPG than the v6. While producing more pollution due to the higher revs. And causing more stress to the engine.
In my opinion driving underpowered cars, is false economy. I would really like to see a study of real people driving 4 and 6 cyl versions of a larger car such as the Soanta and compare results. I suspect you would be surprised.
All I am suggesting is that the engine be appropriate to the vehicle. If you must drive a 4 cyl, how about considering the Elantra, especially with the manual. It's nearly as large as the Soanta in interior room.
Again all this is, is my opinion. I cant offer hard facts. However based on the impression I get from cosmo, I would bet that if he got the 4cyl, he would drive it harder than intended. And therefore not see any mpg gain and a frustrating driving experience.
Well whatever, I feel my 2009 i4 is good enough for me to get around. And I dont have to gun it from the light like ol' lead foot seems to have to. I dont get honked at or passed and if I do so what, Americans need to slow down anyways. Thats one of the reasons we consume so much gas in the first place. That and the need to have the biggest fastest cars on the planet.
I don't want to race my fellow drivers. I just want to be able to stay out of their way.
Quick poll just for curiousity sake:
Where are we doing our driving?
I am in New York.
Check this spreadsheet out. These are real numbers from real drivers around the country and Canada. I have the 4 and seeing the numbers my friends are getting with the 6 I'd probably go for the 6 next time. BTW the 4 has enough umph to get out of anyones way and a 125 mph top speed. :surprise:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pJcyZKy9s5qeUc-opuToYBg
Why do you think that is true. Are you saying if you follow a I4 with a V6 and I accelerate quickly the I4 millage will be worse? You are stating that a V6 is more efficient than an I4. I do not believe it would be worse than the V6 they would just get closer in gas mileage. How long can you "Flog" an engine maybe 12 seconds then you will be going pretty fast (70). I must drive more conservative then most people I would say I push the gas about an 1" may be 25%.
Are you related to the kids with the free-flow muffler who thing that the muffler makes a 4 cylinder Honda Accord a race car. My 2001 Sable could out accelerate the 4 cyclinder Honda Accord. It all comes down to to me if you dislike having the car downshift going up hills and lisening to the engine rev more than you like than the V6 is the way to go.
But honestly the I4 will keep up with any traffic flow I have ever seen.
No, I am not a goofball "boy racer" with the coffee can mufflers that think if the car sounds fast, it is fast. I am a 40 year old father of 3. And drive pretty conservately. Believe me, I was all set to buy the "sensible" 4 cyl Sonata. Gone are the days of BMW's and Infinitis But then I drove the 4 cyl Sonata. And I proved what I always believed, cars should have an engine that appropriately sized. A 4 cyl in a Civic, Corolla or Elantra makes perfect sense. Anything more would be silly, fun maybe, but silly. However a 4 cyl engine in a Camry or Sonata is fools economy. Unless you feather foot it and cruise at a steady 60 mph, you are overstressing the engine. Big cars with small engines is false economy
"You are stating that a V6 is more efficient than an I4."
Not blanketly. But if the car is too big for the engine, yes. Engines have sweet spots. If you are forced to operate an engine too hard too often, it is less efficient. It also experiences greater wear and produces more polution. Compare the 4 cyl to the V6. The V6 produces 48% more horsepower, yet the 4 cyl only gets 15% greater MPG (according to the EPA, I contend real world numbers are closer still) Even so, I think that gives credence to the V6 being more efficient.
"12 seconds then you will be going pretty fast (70)"
Ouch 12 seconds to 70? And how many feet?. Many (most) of the merging lanes in my area are 75 feet or less preceeded by a tight radius 160 degree turn. So you have to accelerate from about10 mph to 65+ in 75 feet. Underpowered cars are a major source of accidents in this scenario.
If you are happy with your 4 cyl Sonata then God Bless. Maybe your driving needs allow for efficient use of the 4. However I am confident that had I bought the 4 cyl Sonata I would have been annoyed every time I drove it, and not realized any mileage benefit.
Also, you are probably underestimating the length of your acceleration lanes.
Though they are two different vehicles, the V6 in the Santa Fe still has the same characteristics as the V6 in the Sonata. Plenty powerful, but slow to downshift when trying to pass or accelerate from a stop; however when it downshifted you got a nice torque rush pushing you into your seat.
When I test drove the 4 Cylinder Limited I did not even drive the the V6 because I knew I would like it better. The primarily thing I miss about the V6 now that I have been driving my Sonata for over one month now is the smoothness and the torque of the 6. The 4 cylinder has NO torque and even on dry pavement with the ESC turned of you can't chirp the tires.
The Lambda V6 just oozed class and luxury even if it wasn't the fastest engine in it's class. The 4 cylinder is pretty quiet for a 4 but it isn't in the same class as the 6 and it kind of hurts the "almost" near luxury appearance and feel of the Sonata.
I have a 2003 Sonata GLS V6 4-Speed Automatic (which was the 2003 equivalent to the 2009 SE). I also have a 2009 Sonata GLS I4 5-Speed Automatic. Of the two....
The 2003 has 113K miles on it and get 23/30 City/Highway in our driving.
The 2009 has 5K miles on it and gets 26/33 City/Highway in our driving. Note that the 2009 has not hit the 20K mark where it will be fully loosened up and getting optimal mileage; we also put 1400 miles on it in the first 10 days of ownership, as we had two emergency trips on consecutive weekends to due to a death in the family, the death 240 miles away, the funeral 500 miles away.
The 2003 is slightly smoother, I think, in hard accelleration than the 2009...and I mean HARD acceleration, as I drive cars hard. The 2009 is the first 4 Cylinder I've bought since 1982, by the way, and I stopped driving that to buy my Baby IROC Camaro in 1989 (5.0 V8). Even THEN, the old Pontiac (the 4 Cylinder I bought in 1982, which was a 1980 model) had 105 HP on a 2100lb car, VERY sporty for the era.
OTOH, when my wife is driving the 2009 and I'm driving the 2003 (we sometime meet somewhere after work, and then drive home later in the evening) I've noticed that while I CAN leave the 2009 behind, I'm certainly not dusting it, and I'm pushing the car hard.... and if I'm behind my wife when she takes off at a stoplight, I have to rev fairly high on the 2003 to keep up.
I've driven the newer v6 extensively ( a couple of long term rentals, one a 2007, one a 2008) and was prepared to buy the v6 if the wife wanted the extra power... but from my perspective, I would have salivated over the v6 back in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Now, the 4 has almost as much HP and oomph as my old Camaro, one of the last of the classic musclecars. My wife took one of the I4s for a test drive on the interstate, gave the I4 some gas, and smiled. That's when I knew we would get an I4.
I mean, I drive hard... even our MINIVAN is a "Sport" minivan, with a High Power v6, sport suspension, and sport tuning (a Crysler Rallye v6 short; would definitely qualify for CARS if we had waited!). The I4 is a good car.