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Midsize Sedans Comparison Thread
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I've never been in an Impala...well not since I owned a '67 ...but was surprised to see that, according to CR's measurements, it has less leg room than VW Jetta. :surprise:
You forgot to add that Sonata's are assembled in a plant that uses robots for 80% of the assembly. I am sure the washer in question isn't applied by a human at all. That's not cheap that is just assembly line technique. After reading your post I went out and pulled on all my grab handles and I weigh 200lbs. Could not loosen them when used as intended. My I suggest that some gorilla the car was previously rented to probably broke it getting his fat butt out of the seat?
Their trucks are damn good
Huh? Are you implying that the Honda is sub-standard in crashes?
Not sure how you can do that, when you haven't seen how other brands would react in the same instances. The only way to do that is proper crash-testing, in which the Honda does as well or better as most other midsize sedans.
Shoot, I have a 1996 Accord that only got 4 stars back then, I hit a guardrail skidding sideways at 35-45 MPH (was run off the road and lost control - no ABS standard 11 years ago!) and walked away. The front 1/4th of my car was lying on the road seperate of the rest of the car, but I was unharmed.
"The front 1/4th of my car was lying on the road seperate of the rest of the car" There you go, you made my point for me.
Another thing, crashing a car straight into a concrete wall at 30 mph or even a 30 mph offset which the insurance industry uses for comparison is not the real world. Car accidents I have been to where people have died or been seriously injured were impacts above 45 mph and as high as 90. Not many modern cars will stay together at the high speed impacts I mentioned but with the safety features the people in them should have been able to walk away. They didn't. So far none of the Hondas that I spoke about had side impact air bags, so I can't tell you that would have helped. I owned a Toyota Tercel for many years and I was also terrified of getting hit for the same reason. The car was reliable and handled well but it was thin metaled and light. A bad combination on highways congested with SUVs and 18 wheelers.
Which cars are you talking about here? Are any of them part of this comparison?
The car was reliable and handled well but it was thin metaled and light. A bad combination on highways congested with SUVs and 18 wheelers.
So which one of these cars do you say would fare better in a crash with an SUV or 18 wheeler? Are we all supposed to drive SUVs for safety?
How do you know this? Another typical Toyota/Honda owner false statement? Less quality? Car was pretty well put together my friend. Ever been in one?
Yes, I have been in one (for an entire week). The Impala was jittery on straight roads, and nose dived on corners. The interior was poorly laid out, with cheap looking and feeling controls. Many family members own Chevys, and I don't see the "perceived" improvements they've made.
If Chevy could make a decent V6, they wouldn't have to put a V8 in a car this size to get some (straight line) performance out of it.
So you are saying the Sonata is safer than the Accord. I think you are assuming a lot here. I bought an 03 Accord, and it has all the same safety features your car has, with the exception of stability control. Did the Sonata offer all this in 03? I seriously doubt it. And I doubt a Sonata is safer than my Accord.
You keep forgeting the scarlet letter they wear thru their own doings.
It could be that the I-4 engine was listed under "standard equipment" and then the V-6 engine was listed under "optional equipment." I have seen this before on some vehicles--often with transmissions--where it will list a manual transmission under "standard equipment" and a simple glance through the window shows an automatic.
The Accord had all these safety features 3 years ago (03), except for stability control. Did the 03 Sonata have these features available? Hyundai is 3 years too late.
This discussion is about new cars, not 3 year old cars, correct?
http://www.carspace.com/lahiri/Albums/windowG6/
http://www.hondanews.com/CatID2006?mid=2002072937039&mime=asc
Sonata, and in fact all Hyundais, had side airbags standard back in 2003. Honda didn't offer standard side bags across its lineup until 2006. I guess you could say Honda was 3 years late.
Correct, but it doesn't make the Sonata any less late. Does it?
The 03 Sonata had no curtains, no abs, and no traction control. Not even as an option. All of these things my 03 Accord has.
What? No abs. My 92 Accord had abs. They are later than I thought.
You keep forgeting the scarlet letter they wear thru their own doings.
Ouch! Probably true tho.
Only the Accord EX V6 had side curtains. Side bags were an option even on the Accord LX--but standard on all '03 Sonatas. Talk about late!
http://autos.msn.com/research/vip/Spec_Glance.aspx?year=2003&make=Hyundai&model=- Sonata&trimid=-1
I checked the specs for my 2002 Hyundai Elantra GT on MSN Autos and it says my car is not available with ABS, traction control, or a sunroof.
I have all three!
I'd look elsewhere for correct information.
The 03 Sonata had no curtains, no abs, and no traction control. Not even as an option.
Also, you conveniently ignore the fact that the 2003 Sonata (and earlier Sonatas in fact) had side airbags standard, on all trim lines. Not so the 2003 Accord. No side bags on the DX. Side bags were an option on the LX. However, one 2003 Accord model, the high-priced EX V6, had side curtains. Big whoop. They should be standard on a car that expensive.
Depreciation is the single biggest expense any owner has on a vehicle, excluding catastrophic out-of-warranty expenses.
This is what annoys buyers of GM/F/DC vehicles the most. 'Why did I pay that much for it last year, if it was only going to be worth this much this year? I feel violated.'
We could talk about pitiful Hyundai a few years back - but we're not - its about what's happening now.
About how Hyundai has turned things around with the Alabama plant, the new 07 Camry, how the Mazda 6 handles....etc
I still think the Accord is slightly ahead, even of the Camry, for the following reason:
My impression, and it might be wrong, is that Honda is the company where the engineers have the most power. Mr. Honda himself was an engineer, and I think the head of Honda today is an engineer. I think all of the presidents of Honda have been engineers, while at other car companies that only happens once in a while. Again, perhaps I'm wrong, but I think the engineers have relatively more power than the bean counters at Honda, at least compared to other car companies. I think if you asked a large group of competent and impartial engine engineers which engine was the most advanced, the Honda i-VTEC would probably get the most votes. It gives the best mpg of any midsize sedan, and is also quite smooth and powerful for its size. The Accord's double wishbone 5 link rear suspension is also, I think, slightly more advanced than its competitors.
I have another small example of where Honda engineering doesn't go for the lowest common denominator. Starting in the 1990s, the federal government started investigating whether improvements needed to be made in the roof crush protection standard for cars. I think the current standard, which first started about 1970, states that a car needs to hold 1.5 times its own weight upside down without the roof crushing in more than a certain number of inches. Many people have contended that this standard is way too weak, and you've probably seen pictures of cars and suvs with their roofs crushed in that make that point.
In the mid 1990s the feds suggested that the standard might be changed to, I think, 2.5 times the weight of the car. Ford, GM, and Chrysler have fought this standard, and so far have successfully delayed it from being implemented. I read that Ford builds almost all of its cars very close to the minimum government standard of 1.5, and didn't want to invest the $200 (or whatever it would cost) per car to strengthen the door pillars and the roofs and fix the problem. That surely wasn't what the engineers at Ford wanted, but that's what the bean counters ordered--after all $200 per car adds up to hundreds of millions of dollars over the years. I read that Honda, in the meantime, designed and built the 1998 Accord to meet the tougher standard. I assume the current Accord is also built to that standard.
On some measures a few of the Accord's competitors may be ahead—the V-6 Camry has more power, the Sonata cost less and yet has stability control across the line (whereas Honda only has it on top end models), etc.—but overall I feel that Honda engineering tends to be a little bit ahead. Now that engineering does cost more—the Accord is thousands more than the comparable Sonata—but perhaps it's even in the small things, like that washer in the door handle mechanism that another poster was talking about—that put Honda slightly ahead.
Not surprinsingly I own a Honda, and so I'm biased. But I have also owned a Mazda, a Ford, two VWs, and two GM cars, and in my sample the Honda just seems the best engineered—in big parts and small—of any of them. But it's true there are a lot of good choices out there, and even I have been tempted by the incredible value of the Sonata.
http://www.iihs.org/brochures/ictl/ictl_4dr.html
http://www.iihs.org/ratings/head_restraints/headrestraints.aspx?hyundai
http://www.iihs.org/ratings/head_restraints/headrestraints.aspx?honda
I've owned Hondas and liked them very much. But I've also owned Hyundais and liked them very much. To me, the Accord is no longer worth the price premium over the Sonata. But a lot of people think otherwise.
If you are driving a 2006 Sonata, good luck in the side crash
Accord
Sonata
- and if you're comparing the "Poor" the Accord got on the rear, to the "Acceptable" the Sonata got on the side. IIHS seems to put side crash tests ahead of rear crash tests.
They placed the Accord at a higher level.
Ranking
The Sonata is a safe car. It offers a lot of standard safety features. The only improvement I think they should make, is the side crash test score.
This "preconception of sub-standard quality" didn't happen by chance - Hyundai earned it.
This "preconception of sub-standard quality" didn't happen by chance - Hyundai earned it.
'Tis True about Hyundai earning it.
Just a little thinking out loud here about GM...
Last night I rode in my sunday-school teacher's 05 Tahoe, and it already had a light bulb out in the interior (behind the climate control sliders), and it was not the first relatively new GM vehicle I have seen with burned-out interior bulbs.
I just found it interesting, because GM supposedly has quality probelms, and I see tons of new Trailblazers, Silverados, Tahoes, and Suburbans with brakelights or DRLs burned out. That just doesn't bode well, even for such a minor thing. Did GM cheap-out on their bulbs?
Something else that is not a big deal, but would annoy me anyway, is that everytime the turn signal lit up, you could see the light from that bulb shine through the check-engine light (or whatever light is to the right of the right blinker...it looked yellow).
I have an 11 year old Honda that only 2 months ago burned out its first interior lightbulb, the one that lights up the PRND321 for the gearshift on the floor-console.
Yeah, my Dad's 04 Accord's center stack/radio information center's lights burned out very early. He ret'd it to be fixed and it just kept burning out.
I find it odd that the IIHS puts more emphasis on side crash tests instead of rear, considering you're about 10 times more likely to be rear-ended than broad-sided if you ever find yourself in an accident.
And how exactly does a car with two goods and one poor score "better" than a car with two goods and one acceptable?
If I had to choose, I'd rather a good for rear and acceptable for side than good for side and poor for rear....
It's unfortunate that some people can't look past Hyundai's history to take a look at what they are doing now. I made that leap with Honda in 1985 and was glad I did. And I made the leap (and quite a leap it was back then) with Hyundai in late 2000 and am glad I did.