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Comments
Your observations are the same as mine.
1. The fuel gauge moves off of "full" right from the beginning after a 100% fill up - no delay.
2. The range seems to be computed based on the volume of fuel between Full and Empty; not the total fuel tank capacity.
I would not say that the fuel is off considerably; it is just uses different reference points than what we are typically accustomed to.
The Hyundai setup provides for a larger reserve capacity than we are used to. IMHO this is a good thing for those who tend to wait til the gauge is under E before they fill up. I hope my wife isn't reading this.
JCS
In Europe almost all cars react like that, i.e. the fuel indicator decreases continuously since you fill up the tank. As for the "reserve fuel" I always prefer a little more fuel into the tank than have to push the car until a gas station... LOL
Been reading lots of posts about the new Santa Fe;Did anyone purchased a 2.7, 5 speed manual, FWD ??
Thats the only type of vehicle (Man. Trans.) I like to purchase:(I like to be in control)What do you think of it??
Thanks
This particular supplier has frozen salaries for management, (after being convinced during the recruitment period that you would be getting a healthy raise in July after your salary evaluation), and now they have eliminated several management positions and 30% of the work force(down to 2 shifts). Day in, and day out listening to the Americans argue with the Koreans about "the way we do things in America" made me sick.
I'm sorry but I'll never buy a Hyundai until I can be convinced that they've mended their ways. I was seriously disappointed in the lack of professionalism shown by Hyundai.
Fit and finish is very good all round. Took a 3.3 FWD version (not the 7 passenger one I mentioned above) for a test drive and it was a very pleasant ride. To coin a phrase it rode and drove like a Cadillac. Very quiet and smooth, almost no wind noise and virtually no rode noise. This really is a very quiet vehicle. The acceleration was more than adequate for me and all aspects of the engine and the transmission worked and shifted as smooth as butter.
The radio sounded ok and worked fine as did the AC etc. The doors shut with a solid thud and all the buttons and switches seemed to click and function as expected. I know how this sounds but I really did like this vehicle.
I know that I am not adding much to the collective data on this vehicle but I just had to add my 2 cents worth, given how well it worked for me on the test drive.
It definetly is on the top of my buy list, once they get the first year bugs worked out . Maybe this time next year I will go again and buy me one.
I bought my first Hyundai a 1999 Elantra station wagon with a 5 speed and 4 cylinder equipped with cruise control. Very aerodynamic and light weight (about 2750 lbs) it gives me 44 miles per gallon at 60 mph on a cross country. It now has 60,000 miles and I carry my tools in back which enables me to back up to my hanger and perform regular maintainance on my Mooney airplane with the rear hatch open even in inclament weather which we don't get much of here in southern Calif.
It has been a perfect auto and has never been to the dealer for service under warrantee or repair.
In April 1999 I went to a Orange County Ca Mercedez dealer with my check book in hand and some idea about what I expected to pay for a new 300 series sedan. My negotiationes did not get very far especially when the sales manager stated, they are going to get their pre-calculated profit even if I did not agree. By chance I stopped into a Hyundai dealership and now you know the rest of the story. I paid exactly 1/3rd of what they wanted for the Mercedez and got greater utility from the Elantra Wagon.
Now I know that my Highlander is not perfect, but it’s better than this. I’m hoping that the assembly line exterior panel fitments will improve with time but maybe that’s as good as it gets with Hyundai, I don’t know.
My wife was very impressed and disappointed with the elantra because she could not drive it because of the manual transmission.
We stopped in a Hyundai Dealer and looked at the 2002 Santa fe. After climbing into and driving the Santa Fe my wife asked if I would agree to her buying one. It was love for the Santa Fe hands down. It is the 4cyl Automatic and we took it home in May 2002. We paid $18,400. out the door (includes tax &license). Now it was my turn to be impressed.
I just had to have one also.
On December 31st 2002 I bought a 2003 Santa Fe. It also has the 4 cylinder engine but I have the 5 speed transmission,it cost me $17,000. out the door including all taxes and license.
The 2003 Santa Fe is the nicest most trouble free car I have ever owned besides the 99 Elantra Wagon. Considering I have bought three new Cadillacs in the past.
I have never looked for neck snapping performance and could not expect it in a family utility vehicle.
The Hyundai 4 cylinder is a long stroke engine which means it puts out high torque at low rpm. Because it puts out approx 140 HP it does not compete on the race circuit but it will comply with all maximum speed limits and still have oomph left over. When you need to extract maximum HP because of hills or passing the 5 speed transmission enables you to put the 4 cylinders to work.
Because of the excellent milage I got from the 99 Elantra I was anxious to see what the same basic 4 cylinders would do for me in the 2003 Santa Fe. (The Hyundai 4 cylinder is the basic power plant borrowed from Mitsubishi). Excellent engine!
Because I drove the Santa Fe over the same route consistently it was very easy for me to make a controlled fuel consumption test. On each test I topped the tank off when the car was on level ground and used the cruise control to maintain the same exact speed on each run between fill ups. The book says the tank holds 17.2 gals but you can add another 2.2 gals in topping it off which brings it to 19.4 gals.
There is lots of talk about milage improvements after engine break in but my experience has shown very little change occuring after break in.
Keeping in mind the 2003 Santa fe curb weight is 3494 lbs vs about 2750 for the 99 Elantra Wagon this difference in weight should be apparent in our test results.
(Could someone out there please correct me on the weight of the 99 Elantra Wagon as I am guessing and I could be wrong).
I don't want to make this post too long for fear of evaporation so I am cutting it off to be continued.
Minor misses:
- Interior dashboard plastic looks a little on the cheap side - it's hard with little give.
- Light in front row does not turn on when door is open.
- Instrument gauges should be electroluminiscent for an aspirational vehicle like the Santa Fe; instead it is a cheap-looking white/blue lettering.
- Interior door handles are plastic - should be chrome.
- Glove compartment too small.
- Cup holders in back seat are integrated in arm rest - not useable if you have 3 in back.
- Cruise control is a series of non-tactile buttons on wheel; it would have been better as a control stalk.
- No body-side moulding.
- Back hatch extremely easy to open due to handle - but a bit stiff and hard to close with one hand.
Overall, it's a fantastic car. It looks great, is silky-smooth and quiet on the road, handles almost as well as a car, and of course has an unbeatable price for value.
The worst milage I got was 27 mpg pulling a small utility trailer with total weight of 1100 lbs mostly city driving.
I use Mobile 1 which is synthetic oil and the milage had stabilized at 32.5 mpg with a cruise speed of 58 mph. Recently I made two trips to Reno Nevada over Route 395. While in Carson City I made two trips over the Sierra Nevada which for about 50 miles is 7000 feet above sea level and with an outside air temperature of 90 degrees the density altitude is over 10000 feet. I expected the milage to drop drastically but the Hyundai injection system has an altitude compensator. As a result the milage was still 31mpg and with all of the downshifting the speed varied from 25mph to as high as 55 mph. Of course the engine had no power and maximum available was about 40 hp. Even the 300 hp autos lost their oomph and found it hard to pass other vehicles.
I am the worlds biggest skeptic when it comes to claims made by engine oil additive companies. To prove most do not work I have experimented down through the years and made records of the results. Probably the biggest seller of engine oil additives was and still is Slick 50 which is a Teflon based resin additive.
On one of my trips to Carson City which is 400 miles one way I added one container of Teflon resin to my 2003 Santa Fe engine and the milage changed from 32.5 to 34.2. This is the same small improvement I have found on several other vehicles I experimented with in the past.
In my attempt to find the maximum milage attainable on the 2003 Santa fe I added a product called Gas-Kicker which supposedly produces better combustion. It has a lot of testing data behind it and when I added 2 ounces to my full tank the milage increased from 34.2 to 36.1 mpg.
I firmly believe that The maximum milage has been attained and in order to make further improvements the last option would be to reduce the weight of the vehicle by at liest 500 pounds. I especially like being able to travel 500 miles on a tank of fuel.
On 5 May 2006 I was driving my 2003 Santa Fe on the Freeway in So Ca in the far right lane in very light traffic. I was traveling at exactly 55 mph (on cruise control). It was 12:00 midnight. I saw the headlights of a vehicle to my left coming towards me. Since it was perpendicular to me I thought it was coming from the other side of the freeway.
There was no place for me to go as the freewy wall was to my right.
He hit me exactly in the middle of my left two doors. The noise of the crash was tremendous and my Santa Fe shook and shimmied as I corrected the steering to continue straight ahead.
The engine shut down so I coasted to the apron of the next fwy exit and stopped. The first thing I did was to look at my body to see if my legs and arms were still in tact.
Shortly another vehicle (2005 Lincoln) came coasting up behind me and the driver informed me he had also been hit by the same vehicle that hit me.
The result was; a 1994 honda traveling at over 75 miles per hour struck the 2005 lincoln in the rear that was traveling behind me. The honda continued out of control crossing the lanes of the Fwy before coming back and hitting me.
All three cars were towed off the fwy and no one was seriously hurt.
The damages to my Santa Fe first estimate was $12,500. so the insurance company immediately totaled it out. I had my 2003 Santa Fe towed to a garage that I had experience with when I was in the insurance business.
They ordered a lot of used parts and the repairs involved removing most of the left side of the Santa fe. They spent many hours repairing the lower chassis and the total came to $8000.
My Santa Fe saved me from serious injury because the Honda was lower than the Santa Fe and the frame took the brunt force of the collision and prevented the honda from penetrating the doors and reaching my body. As it was I had several cuts and bruises on my body from the pieces of plastic that flew around.
I am so thankful to have been driving the Santa Fe rather than a regular compact vehicle.
My car spent a total of 65 days in the repair shop.
The driver of the car that caused the accident only had $10,000 limits of property damage.
Also there has been some discussion about the Bridgstone tires on the 2007 Santa Fe. I also had some missgivings about the tires and did some checking. The 225/70/16 tires have a tread wear rating of 300. The original tread depth is 10/32 and the tire is not light truck rated. Because of the tread wear rating of 300, a very agressive driver will not get over 35,000 miles out of the tire. On the other hand prior to the 2007 model year all Santa Fe's came with five full size tires and wheels. This means that if you rotate the tires you will get 20% greater milage out of a set.
The Bridgestone is not only a quiet running tire but the plient sidewalls give a nice ride. So when the chips are down the tires as supplied are a good compromise for most Santa Fe drivers.
Regarding that tread wear rating of 300, I really bitched and moaned about such a low rating as most discriminating drivers look for ratings of 460 or above. I was chatting with a large tire service center about the bridgestone low rating of 300 when the owner showed me some low cost tires that they took off from Calif Highway Patrol vehicles. I almost crapped my pants when I saw the tires had a tread wear rating of 270. I hope one of you many rubber experts out there will give me your opinion on that one.
Lots of tire people deprecate the Michelin brand of tire. I have had nothing but good results. My 1999 Hyundai Elantra came with Michelins and they now have 60,000 miles and the tread wear is now 4/32 (they are ready to be converted into asphalt) but they are kiddy car sized tires and never were intended to last so long. I was able to get 100,000 miles on my cadillac equiped with Michelins. The tires began to break before the tread completely wore out.
Please somebody, educate me on the advantage of the low profile 18 inch tire on the expensive 2007 Santa Fe. Sure, they must look good, and they must grip the pavement coming down the mountain on the suicide curves but is it not time to reduce our speeds and conserve resources? Why should we allow ourselves to be permanently blackmailed by the middle east OPEC oil producers?
During the year 2005 we killed 43,445 innocent men women and children on our nation highways. Where are the right to life demonstrators marching to stop the carnage? We lose 2500 soldiers (I am a korean war vet helicopter search and rescue)in Iraq and the radical left is ready to capitulate.
The Rav4 more quiet? better visibility? better audio system layout? better comfort? Are you kidding? :mad:
http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/Drives/Comparos/articleId=116618
I didn't road test the CX-7 but, IMO, the Santa Fe is a better choice overall...
The Toyota salesman killed any chance of us buying the RAV4 by stating right after the test drive that "Toyota doesn't offer incentives and they don't discount the price." I hadn't even brought up price at that point. With attitudes like that Toyota, or any dealer for that matter, won't be selling many vehicles.
We did NOT drive the CX-7. The overall look and specs just didn't appeal to us.
So we bought the Santa Fe Limited and are loving it. Often, people think it is a high-end vehicle like a Lexus. I'm glad we paid much less.
Hyundai has touted a increase in fuel efficiency from the 2.7 liter v6 for the year 2007. However the 2007 equipped with 2.7 v6 and manual tranny now weighs 3727 lbs (getting heavy huh). This is 233 lbs more than the earlier Santa Fe equiped with the 4 Cylinder and the manual tranny.
Remember the 700 lbs increase from the earlier elantra to the Santa Fe and using the same engine cost a milage reduction of eleven miles per gallon.
The Hyundai engineers must have pulled out a few hairs on the 2007 because of the desire to decrease fuel consumption and this all goes against the trend.
One can clearly see that motor vehicle design has it's trade offs just like aviation design.
It is clear the 2007 Santa Fe includes features such as much quieter interior, more room and a better ride.
They are taking away the full size spare tire and wheel, the body cladding and several items that were very funcional indeed. Unless one has owned the earlier Santa Fe it is hard to oppreciate all of the little items that have disappeared.
We also have to contend with the first year production snafus that always appear on a new model. Most buyers will not subject themselve to those early production problems.
When sales of the manual tranny with the 4 cyl engine in the Santa Fe did not produce adequate numbers Hyundai stopped offering the 4 cyl engine. Will the 2007 Santa Fe loose the Manual tranny also later on? Interesting thought! Very few of the compeditors offer the Manual transmission.
Next up I dorve the RAV4..frankly..it felt like a much less expensive vehicle while driving..the noise level and ride quality were not even in the same ball park as either the mazda or the Santa Fe based on my drive. The salesman was also very cocky and said sticker when I inquired on price..I said..CYA! :>)
Then I went back to the 07 SF LTD (FWD) and drove it..looked at it very closely...and was so impressed with fit and finish, noise level, and tightness of ride..that I went with it. It's not the fastest, it's not an off roader, and it's not as sleek looking as the Maz. To me, what it is..is very well designed, very well built, exptremely comfortable vehicel to drive. The fact that it has a better warranty and came at a great price, was like icing on my cake. I wish the had not overlooked a few somple things....but hey...no one is perfect. When I start driving, I would like the car doors to lock themselves..they don't. When I turn the engine off, I would liek the sun roof to close itself, it does not. But I can live with these things. For 25,400 plus tax and tags....I feel that I would be hard pressed to find another vehicle that comes close to delivering the quality of ride and appointments that this one does. Now, this is my first Hyundai....how will it hold up? That remains to be seen....but so far..words can not express how happy I am with this vehicle. I still love the fact that it's built in Alabama too....that's cool!
I have 550 miles on it now..and the first tank got me 18.3 MPG in 90% city driving with the A/C blasting most of the time.....not bad....let's eee how it does after it's broken in.
USER OPTION MODE
The BCM (Body Control Module) offers 3 items user option mode for a user convenience (AUTO DOOR LOCK, ARM/DISARM BY KEY, HORN ANSWER BACK)
It is able to set up the enable or disable of AUTO DOOR LOCK function or AUTO DOOR LOCK operation vehicle speed when using it.
It is able to set up the enable or disable of enter the burglar alarm mode when using door lock by the key.
It is able to set up the enable or disable of horn inform function when using door lock by the key or RKE.
Select option "SNATAFF(CM)" and press ENTER.
Select option "BODY CONTROL MODULE" and press ENTER.
Select option "USER OPTION" and press ENTER.
Select option "AUTO DOOR LOCK STATUS by using the direction button(▲ / ▼).
Select the parameter by using the direction button(◀ / ▶) and press ENTER to save it. (Disable / 5km/h / 10km/h / 15km/h / 20km/h / 25km/h /30km/h / 35km/h / 40km/h)
Like Backy guessed, similar set up to the Sonata and Azera.
Another Q is i know that the headlights are Automatic, so by leaving them in this mode, what do they do? I mean do they turn on automatically when its getting dark?
Another 2 Q's sry guys. When exiting your 07 SF leaving your headlights on and then locking it with the remote do the headlights turn off by themselves?
And the last Q is are the window switches also lighted by the interior lights?
Thx for you answers.
they shut off when you turn the vehicle off
the window buttons...hmmm I don't think they do light up..have to check!
My Mazda 3 has auto lights. Leave the switch on Auto and the full headlights and rears will come on automaticlly when it senses when it is getting dark. They will not turn off automatically when the engine is turned off.
Will need to check Hyundai's web page
The headlights work as Jackw77 stated.
JCS
They must have used a photo for another country's offering.
JCS
Thx
JCS
Maybe the '08 Santa Fe will adopt that feature to keep the "bell and whistle" quotient high.
This is Sparcap calling!!
Please tell me the latest news or rumors, where is the 07 Santa Fe equiped with the 5 speed manual Tranny? Has anyone seen it ? If it is still a mystery item when will it be revealed?
Please Bros and Sisses give me what I really need!! Good old fashened information.
As usual the dealers are even more in the dark than we are.
Once again, ETRAILER.COM has the hidden Towing Hitch Class three 3500 pounds rated for $129.00
Over and out Sparcap54!!
http://www.hyundaiusa.com/vehicle/santafe/santafe.aspx
Cheers
The 18" might give a harder-harsher ride? Have to agree on a smooth road the car is tight and quiet..I don't think the tires have everything to do with ride, I think it is more to do with the suspension? lack of insulation? dampening?
Loving every moments of it. On acceleration, it lags abit to feel the rush, but when it comes, I can really feel the power compared to my old car. The suspension is firm, so u can feel every bumps of the road. And it does a good job in absorbing some shocks; thus, a nice, smooth ride. Yes, mine is AWD, I can lock it at AWD, but no need of it now. Nowadays, most SUVs or CUVs have AWD on demand. It will kick in when road is wet and icey. Probably, I will turn AWD on in snowy winter time. That is when AWD will perform. One minor issue: Some rattling noise from the 2nd row seat behind the front passenger seat. Possibly from the locking mechanism is not fully in place. Nonetheless, it is not annoying.
The interior is tan color. And it is not resistance to dusts and dirts. Easily, u will get marks here and there. So a good all weather floor mat is needed to replace the factory ones. And maybe, maybe some seat coverings..
Someone mentioned about the wiper sensor, I would like to have it on my SF.
http://www.netcarshow.com/hyundai/2007-santa_fe/
Enjoy.
Anyone seen of know where i can find pictures of 07 SF in Gray interior? Want to see how it would look in this color. Since this is the only color i like interiors in, i wonder how good it will look with the wood and aluminum.
Thx
I got another question. The lights on each side of the bumper those look like rear foglights to me kind of how the XC90 has, are these actual rear foglights? Or are they just reflectors? Because i know that on the 1st gen SF it looks like there is a bulb inside of there so i was just wondering if these were actual lights or just reflectors like the 06-07 Pilot?