Thanks for the review. Hopefully the rattle is just that car and not a problem with all Sonatas. I know something like that would be a deal breaker for me.
I have not experienced any rattles in my Limited, even over rough roads. It is very tight so far. I have had squeaking/rattling problems on recent Camrys and Accords, so I hope this one stays tight.
I'm 6 feet and fit in the back okay. It depends on body structure, not just height.
Drove one in Winston-Salem, NC today. They had a GLS as well. I was a little skeptical at first about the 4 cyl. I had just finished driving a Mazda 6 4cyl, and the Sonata blew it away. It is definitely not as peppy as my wife's V6 Solara, but I was still impressed. The car handled great and was very comfortable. I loved the way the cockpit looks with the way the gauges light up. I like the features that the Limited has, so I've got them looking for one and I'll probably get it. They did come off the price a little on the SE.
The guy is supposed to check the area inventory Sunday. Hopefully I'll find out something tomorrow. I like the black and the dark blue. The biggest problem I will have is that it is longer than my 2001 Altima and it barely fits in my garage. We'll see I guess. Thanks for the info.
Sounds like a home run to me. I think if someone wants something a little more sporty just opt for the SE. Camcords are going to have to step up their game.
I have owned the latest generation of both the Camry and the Accord. The new Sonata handles, rides, and responds much better than either of them, in my opinion. I drove the Fusion, and I have difficulty understanding why its handling is rated so highly. It's interior is uncomfortable for me and somewhat low-budget even in SEL form. The Mazda handles great, but I find the seats uncomfortable and the 4 cylinder engine pretty raspy. The CC is a great car, and beats the Sonata in handling, comfort, quality, but I didn't find it very practical. All just my opinion.
According to the dealer here in Roseville, CA (near Sacramnto) they will have some available aroiund the end of this coming week.! I am looking forward to a test drive.
Thanks for posting that. A couple of observations:
* CR has been vocal in the past about "suspension noise" on the Sonata and some other Hyundais. Not one word about that in their review. That is good news.
* It seems the interior is still plenty roomy, with good visibility, despite the coupe-ish profile. That was a concern for me. So again, good news.
It will be interesting to see what the press thinks of the SE. MT was very positive on the 2009 SE and ranked it 2nd in the mid-sized family sedan class, just behind the much more expensive turbo Passat. With Passat-like power and other improvements, and no other new cars in the class since that review except the Legacy and Kizashi, I would expect MT to put the 2011 Sonata SE at the top of the mid-sized family car class... maybe even their 2011 COTY?? (Not so crazy a thought.. the Genesis sedan was runner-up in the 2009 MT COTY to the Nissan GT-R supercar.)
How is rear vision( blind spots) ?? Too many cars today are very stylish but engineers do not think of blind spots..especially to the rear. Drove a 2009..car had excellent vision front...side and rear !
If you are risk-averse and don't need to buy a new car for awhile, sure. There are significant new-for-Hyundai technologies in the 2011 Sonata including DI and the 6AT. And of course all-new body, interior, tweaked if not new suspension, sound systems, etc. etc. Wait a year or so and see how the car shakes out. Also prices will be lower a year from now than they are now for this brand-new design.
The front vision is excellent. The rear vision is good, much better than expected given the coupe styling. Fewer rear blind spots than the Camry I traded.
I'm an Audi guy and this new Sonata made my head turn and look twice last Saturday when I saw it. Didn't know what it was. Really great lines on this car.
If i had the choice between this, a Honda Accord and a Camry - I's take this new Sonata all day long.
Hyundai hit it out of the park with this new Sonata. They are going to take a lot of business away from Honda and Toyota - mostly Toyota with all their drama and problems.
Along with the Genesis, these are 2 very nice looking cars that will take Hyundai to new levels.
I did the same thing when I went to our local auto show a couple weeks ago. I did a double take. I must have sat in and looked at the new Sonata 3 times. There were a lot of people hovering around it. It is nicer inside and out then anything in its class. Initial driving impressions are positive. Everyone is taking notice. This is gonna be huge for Hyundai.
I'm interested in the SE (and headed to Charlotte ironically). Come on Richard38...tell us about the driving experience. Run some informal 0-60 times!! How's it handle and ride??
Chris Shaffer said he is getting 31 in the next 14 days at his Roseville store and 10-12 at his Sacromento store. First one [Roseville] is a GLS [phantom black] with pop equip. package and the second and third are SEs. First SE phantom black and second SE will be Venietian red.. I wish I wasn't 260 miles away. I would be there watching them unload. I want an SE. Thinking about Iridescent silver blue metallic, indigo blue pearl, phantom black, or harbor gray metallic. That's right, I can't decide.
Have not test 0-60 Times, waiting for car to be broken in. Car rides and Handles great! Car is very quiet and mileage (so far according to trio computer is 28 mpg)-Mixed city and road driving. When I was searching for the SE, I found another SE at Lake Norman Hyundai (Black)-Didn't want Black-Looking for Polar White. Most Dealers in Charlotte area only received 1 or 2 SE's.
Picked up a silver GLS yesterday at Atlantic Hyundai in West Islip, NY. Got a lease for $3300 down and $189 a month for 36 months with 12,000 miles a year. It is amazing how many features come standard on a bare bones GLS. The car drives beautifully and I saw heads turning when I was stopped at a red light.
Thanks Richard....I drive right by that Lake Norman dealership on the way into town. Did you pick up yours at that dealership on South Blvd? Thanks for the info. Feel powerful enough? How's the 6 speed auto work? I'm a former lineman..so I appreciate headroom and legroom...
This is great new for the resale value of the new 2011 Hyundai Sonata. By having excellent resale value, the Sonata is a complete all around car. I will wait for the Sonata to be in the market for a year and then I will buy. Can't wait to test drive one. Who would have ever thought that there would come a time in the car market/industry where Toyota is recalling vehicles by the millions and Hyundai is making cars like the Sonata and increasing there residual/market value. The tables have turned and the game has changed. Go Hyundai!
Plenty of power, the transmission seems smooth. Bought car at South Blvd, from Demarco. Traded in a 2007 Santa Fe Limited, price for new car and trade in was excellent! Also Hyundai has 2.9 financing + $500 Valued Owner discount. Also got money off sticker price + no add ons.
By having excellent resale value, the Sonata is a complete all around car.
I don't see how anyone can peg the resale value of a new model that's just beginning to appear in showrooms. Until meaningful numbers of the latest Sonata turn up in the used car market 2 or 3 years from now, it makes no more sense to talk about its resale value than it does to forecast the weather for the Labor Day weekend.
Please don't take this as an anti-Sonata remark. It most emphatically is not. This is true of any new model, no matter who makes it.
This is why I don't consider resale value when I'm shopping for a car. It's not like 0 to 60 times, ride & handling, seating comfort or rear visibility - all of which can be determined by test drives or reading reports in auto mags. Projected resale value is just a seat-of-the pants guess as to what the car might be worth 3 or 5 years down the road - nothing more.
Does the Sonata Limited have memory drivers seat and outside mirrors? The Fusion & Malibu does not offer this. I like the memory feature because me & my wife both drive the same car.
I'm waiting for a call to test drive tomorrow. I was wondering about what tires -the name not the size -come on the various trims and how the car handles in the snow (I live in Upstate NY)and for the limited owners how does the HD audio perform. On Hyundai USA site when I build a limited it seems that if Nav is on board then HD radio is deleted. HD is one reason I would go with the Limited over the SE. I am currently at the end of an Impala lease and looking for a replacement. Our annual auto show is this week and I will be looking at the Fusion the Legacy the Lacrosse and in particular the 2011 Sonata. hope the dealer gets one in so I can test drive it tomorrow.
Well, ALG can do it. They do it because they HAVE to do it; leases are based on resale/residual values. It's a prognostication, certainly, but the ALG folks have been doing it a long time and ostensibly have some method to their madness. They probably take into account how competitive they think the car is/will be against the rest of the field, and other factors I expect.
Real-world resale values are more certain, but this opinion by ALG on Sonata's projected resale value is a big step for Hyundai, IMO, since resale value is perhaps the one remaining big "knock" on the company.
Take a look at the Regal also, is much closer than the LaCrosse to the Sonata in several ways including engine. I've read some very positive reviews on the car, which is basically a rebadged Opel Insignia and almost-the-next-Aura.
This video is very disappointing. So much for the 198/200 hp and the 184 ft lb torque - best in class hp/wt ration, best in class hp, etc. etc. I had great expectations and was quite interested in the sonata until learning there would be no V-6. I am not looking for a street rod, but this video confirms to me that a 4 cyl is a 4 cyl is a 4 cyl. Maybe if they do the 2.4 with turbo (I've read on the 2.0 turbo genesis and it's not all one might expect) but otherwise, I am going to pass. Was hoping to buy before June, but no hurry.
The new Regal is awful - it is 3600 lbs. and makes 184 hp ... awful!! My girlfriend's 99 Regal GS is 3564 lbs. but makes 240 hp and 281 lb. of torque thanks to a supercharged V6. How this huge, heavy car is going to get by on a crappy 4 cylinder is beyond me. And GM wonders why they are going broke????
As for the Sonata, as someone said before the initial power off the line was a bit less than the Camry because of the gear ratios, but once the Sonata got into real world driving situations (3rd and 4th gears) the Camry was annihilated. This means that most times you use power (for things like ripping from lane to lane and passing people on the wrong side of the road like a maniac) .. it will be there and plenty of it. I can't wait to get one
Also, the Sonata was ahead the whole time in this race, it just looks bad because of the angle. Check out this video from directly beside the Sonata -
The video states at the top that the Sonata is a 2.4 but everything else is in Korean or Japanese? The Korean Sonata is a 2.0 liter engined car so I doubt that the Korean Sonata in the video is the 2.4 version.
I would just wait for the autorags to come out with 0-60 numbers. I'm more concerned about fuel economy as 200hp is more the enough for me. I have 105hp in my 95 corolla so anything is gonna be fast for me.
Hey any of you people who purchased or leased the 2011 already. Have any of you taken it out on a rough or bumpy street and did you notice if the suspension is noisy on those situations? My 2009 is very noisy and is one of the big reasons I would consider trading for the 2011. thanks!
I have driven over roads with potholes. The suspension noise is gone. That was one reason I didn't buy a Sonata before this. As someone noted above, CR complained about the suspension noise in previous Sonatas, but didn't mention it in their initial drive review of the 2011. In sum, it rides very quietly.
IMO is shows that the first 2 or 3 trans gears on the Sonata are set for economy more than performance. At the stop light drag race the Camry might win, but even then I think it's close enough that it will come down to driver skill. And in the real world I would wonder about people who race normally aspirated 4 cyl family sedans.
Also, I couldn't tell anything about wheel spin and TCS interference. The audio we heard was, I think, the camera car and not the racing vehicles.
Anyway, this is the wrong race. The race to watch is the 6 cyl Camry v. 6 cyl Accord v. Turbo I4 Sonata.
I've heard of ALG. I also remember a WSJ article a few years back about ALG's role in car leasing that made it clear that there's precious little science behind setting residual values. It really came down to this: 3-year-old big SUVs coming off lease now are fetching x% of their original sales price at auction, so we're confident that new big SUVs will do as well 3 years from now.
That's what ALG's clients got for their money. And it was true, more or less, as long as gas prices stayed below $2/gallon.
Here's my absolutely free prediction: Hyundai resale values will trend upward, partly because there are fewer buyers who remember or care about Hyundai's troublesome early entries in the U.S. market & partly because Toyota, which has dominated this market segment since the dawn of creation, has stepped into a really deep hole. That can only help Hyundai.
I'm not understanding why you're saying slower than the Camry by a car length, the Sonata won the race, no? Seemed like the lower gears the Camry had more torque but around 12 seconds in the Sonata pulled ahead nicely.
Anyway, I really hope this car pans out. It might be what I'm looking for. I like the Accord and Altima, and would take a peak at the Mazda 6 as well, but this one is looking great on paper. Right mix of style, comfort and hopefully some balls (for it's class).
ALG has been used by the auto industry for leasing residual values for over 30 years. I also seem to recall an article that said they were tops in their industry. Sorry, but I will take their WAG way before I will take yours.
Plus, you say that ALG's prediction is baloney and then you turn around and give the reasons why their prediction is probably correct.
Sorry, but I will take their WAG way before I will take yours.
And that's fine -- as long as you realize that any such projection, no matter what the source, is just that: a WAG. Nothing more.
Plus, you say that ALG's prediction is baloney and then you turn around and give the reasons why their prediction is probably correct.
No, I didn't say that "ALG's prediction is baloney" - only that there's not much to this business of predicting resale value. As you said yourself, it's just a WAG. Anyone can play this game. I just did it. You can, too.
But my real point is this: no serious car buyer should base his decision on something as intangible & unpredictable as projected resale value - no matter car he's considering.
Ask yourself this: would you give up seating comfort or good ergonomics or superior ride & handling or styling that you liked just because you read - or someone told you - that another car had superior resale value? Of course not. So how much does projected resale value really matter to you? Probably not very much.
At most, you might use it as a tie-breaker. If you reached a point in the shopping process where you found that even after extensive research & repeated test drives, you simply couldn't decide between 2 equally appealing cars, then - just before you resorted to a coin toss - you might pick the car with the higher projected resale value.
But how often does that happen? Just about never, I'd say, & I've been buying cars for more than 35 years. Usually, projected resale value is something that you point to as justification for your decision later on, when you're telling your friends about your new car at a neighborhood party. It's almost never a meaningful factor in the actual decision-making process.
In my case, I never pay attention to it - mainly because we keep our cars for at least 8 to 10 years. (I don't buy a new car until I have the money in the bank to pay for it. I don't do car loans.) By the time I'm ready to get rid of a car, I've pretty much used it up.
Comments
I'm 6 feet and fit in the back okay. It depends on body structure, not just height.
* CR has been vocal in the past about "suspension noise" on the Sonata and some other Hyundais. Not one word about that in their review. That is good news.
* It seems the interior is still plenty roomy, with good visibility, despite the coupe-ish profile. That was a concern for me. So again, good news.
It will be interesting to see what the press thinks of the SE. MT was very positive on the 2009 SE and ranked it 2nd in the mid-sized family sedan class, just behind the much more expensive turbo Passat. With Passat-like power and other improvements, and no other new cars in the class since that review except the Legacy and Kizashi, I would expect MT to put the 2011 Sonata SE at the top of the mid-sized family car class... maybe even their 2011 COTY?? (Not so crazy a thought.. the Genesis sedan was runner-up in the 2009 MT COTY to the Nissan GT-R supercar.)
If i had the choice between this, a Honda Accord and a Camry - I's take this new Sonata all day long.
Hyundai hit it out of the park with this new Sonata. They are going to take a lot of business away from Honda and Toyota - mostly Toyota with all their drama and problems.
Along with the Genesis, these are 2 very nice looking cars that will take Hyundai to new levels.
Linky
Tops in ALG Residual Value Index
When I was searching for the SE, I found another SE at Lake Norman Hyundai (Black)-Didn't want Black-Looking for Polar White. Most Dealers in Charlotte area only received 1 or 2 SE's.
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/2011-hyundai-sonata-gls-tops-popular-com- petitors-including-premium-brands-in-alg-residual-value-index-83845712.html
I don't see how anyone can peg the resale value of a new model that's just beginning to appear in showrooms. Until meaningful numbers of the latest Sonata turn up in the used car market 2 or 3 years from now, it makes no more sense to talk about its resale value than it does to forecast the weather for the Labor Day weekend.
Please don't take this as an anti-Sonata remark. It most emphatically is not. This is true of any new model, no matter who makes it.
This is why I don't consider resale value when I'm shopping for a car. It's not like 0 to 60 times, ride & handling, seating comfort or rear visibility - all of which can be determined by test drives or reading reports in auto mags. Projected resale value is just a seat-of-the pants guess as to what the car might be worth 3 or 5 years down the road - nothing more.
Real-world resale values are more certain, but this opinion by ALG on Sonata's projected resale value is a big step for Hyundai, IMO, since resale value is perhaps the one remaining big "knock" on the company.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INBnV2kZx34
about a car length slower than camry 2.5L I4
As for the Sonata, as someone said before the initial power off the line was a bit less than the Camry because of the gear ratios, but once the Sonata got into real world driving situations (3rd and 4th gears) the Camry was annihilated. This means that most times you use power (for things like ripping from lane to lane and passing people on the wrong side of the road like a maniac) .. it will be there and plenty of it. I can't wait to get one
Also, the Sonata was ahead the whole time in this race, it just looks bad because of the angle. Check out this video from directly beside the Sonata -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjY5Hz0FHts&feature=related">link title
thanks!
Also, I couldn't tell anything about wheel spin and TCS interference. The audio we heard was, I think, the camera car and not the racing vehicles.
Anyway, this is the wrong race. The race to watch is the 6 cyl Camry v. 6 cyl Accord v. Turbo I4 Sonata.
That's what ALG's clients got for their money. And it was true, more or less, as long as gas prices stayed below $2/gallon.
Here's my absolutely free prediction: Hyundai resale values will trend upward, partly because there are fewer buyers who remember or care about Hyundai's troublesome early entries in the U.S. market & partly because Toyota, which has dominated this market segment since the dawn of creation, has stepped into a really deep hole. That can only help Hyundai.
Anyway, I really hope this car pans out. It might be what I'm looking for. I like the Accord and Altima, and would take a peak at the Mazda 6 as well, but this one is looking great on paper. Right mix of style, comfort and hopefully some balls (for it's class).
Plus, you say that ALG's prediction is baloney and then you turn around and give the reasons why their prediction is probably correct.
In short... it's not all about 0-60 times and drag racing. The Sonata and its ilk are mid-sized family cars, not sports cars.
When gas goes to $4 again, everbody wants 35 MPG on the HWY.
This segment is about value and overall pacakge in a 20 something price range. And 200hp is enough to compete, although not neck snapping fast.
Loaded V6 Camrys and Accords get just over 30k and it starts to get in a higher price range
And that's fine -- as long as you realize that any such projection, no matter what the source, is just that: a WAG. Nothing more.
Plus, you say that ALG's prediction is baloney and then you turn around and give the reasons why their prediction is probably correct.
No, I didn't say that "ALG's prediction is baloney" - only that there's not much to this business of predicting resale value. As you said yourself, it's just a WAG. Anyone can play this game. I just did it. You can, too.
But my real point is this: no serious car buyer should base his decision on something as intangible & unpredictable as projected resale value - no matter car he's considering.
Ask yourself this: would you give up seating comfort or good ergonomics or superior ride & handling or styling that you liked just because you read - or someone told you - that another car had superior resale value? Of course not. So how much does projected resale value really matter to you? Probably not very much.
At most, you might use it as a tie-breaker. If you reached a point in the shopping process where you found that even after extensive research & repeated test drives, you simply couldn't decide between 2 equally appealing cars, then - just before you resorted to a coin toss - you might pick the car with the higher projected resale value.
But how often does that happen? Just about never, I'd say, & I've been buying cars for more than 35 years. Usually, projected resale value is something that you point to as justification for your decision later on, when you're telling your friends about your new car at a neighborhood party. It's almost never a meaningful factor in the actual decision-making process.
In my case, I never pay attention to it - mainly because we keep our cars for at least 8 to 10 years. (I don't buy a new car until I have the money in the bank to pay for it. I don't do car loans.) By the time I'm ready to get rid of a car, I've pretty much used it up.