My better half's Hyundai i10 Asta Automatic: My first impressions My wife bought an i10 Asta automatic last night and we've driven it about 60km so far. We bought the asta because my wife wanted a very small convenient automatic transmission car (as a change from her Accord which we still have) and insisted on a car with airbags and the other features were a sweet bait (not at all that sweet as it turns out)
Intitial impressions: The good:
The car is wonderfully easy to drive. New York city traffic could not make us switch from manuals to automatics, but delhi traffic, the state it is in now, made us become willing to try out one. My wife initially thought that the i10 automatic is like a scooter to drive, boring and uninvolving, but warmed to the idea of the convenience. And indeed it is very convenient. It is such a stress free way to get around the NCR. this is the first time I have actually found an automatic a true convenience and stress relieving benefit. The automatic is shifts smoothly and willingly and has not so far made us feel like its in the wrong gear and not shifting when needed.
The interior is nicely put together with good quality materials and good fit and finish. The car is very smooth going down the highway at 80km/h. Since the high way speed limits are 90km/h here and it was bought for primarily city use, it doesn't matter whether its good for cruising at 120km/h. The handling is not very sporty, but nor is it reluctant to be zipping around directional changes. Its very maneuverable in tight spaces ranging from parking in tight galis crammed for of cars to negotiating narrow streets jammed up by parked cars, autos, cycle rickshaws, piles of building construction materials dumped on the street, etc.
The steering is light and linear
The sunroof is very nice as well. its smooth and quick in operation and lovely to have some open air above your head on demand.
It is very nearly the perfect urban runabout. but there are some sour notes: The bad:
the car has two troubling points.
1.The throttle pedal is too high. You must tilt your foot way up to get on the throttle pedal and then keep the calf and other muscles of the leg in a very tensed up state to maintain that position. its very fatiguing. I don't know about my wife, but I would not be able to use this car on a regular basis because of this flaw. I will have to compare it to my friend's i10 manual to see why I didn't have this problem in that car.
I hope that my wife will not find it a problem.
2. Most of the premium level sweeteners in the Asta are complete garbage. They are obviously penny and dime junk:
The reverse parking sensor is useless. instead of having a beep that gets progressively more rapid, it has just a beep and a constant tone. and system goes into constant tone when the car is still 4 feet from whatever is behind it. it is COMPLETELY useless. The blue-tooth function is also completely useless. the transmission between the system and my iPhone 4 and the car's system is so poor 3 words out of 5 drop out making communication impossible. The seat height adjust is also poor. it doesn't move the bottom squab up and down in a linear fashion. in some part of the travel, the bottom comes up more in other parts, the front moves more, the effect is of varying the tilt of the bottom squab along with its height. Also, the car is so small, that the vertical movement of the seat bottom cannot begin to make a tall person comfortable when what he needs is more backward travel in the seat. The stereo is absolute garbage. The sound quality is extremely poor. Of course we can get an aftermarket unit but we will then lose the car's built in USB/Aux ports and the steering wheel volume and blue tooth controls.
I am feeling a bit disgusted with Hyundai because it speaks of a very poor mentality when you charge people a substantial amount of money for features on the top model but use such low cost garbage components as to make the features you have sold completely useless. Verdict:
We can live with the crappy electronics package. We will have to see what we can do about the throttle pedal. If it doesn't bother my wife, we'll be all set and can get down to enjoying this otherwise wonderfully convenient little urban runabout. If it does bother my wife, we'll have to see if some modification can be made to the throttle pedal to lower its height in the car (perhaps by bending the stem a bit)
Apart from those issues, its a truly wonderful and convenient little urban run about, near about perfect because it combines the small size with the convenience of an auto trans and the refinement and safety features of a bigger car. If the throttle pedal height doesn't bother my wife, this will be the absolutely perfect car and perfect choice for her that we could have mde.
I will update the thread with more impressions and thoughts and changes as they develop as well as my wife's impressions, because honestly, my opinion matters less than hers because we bought the car for her. We are also curious to see how the fuel economy thing pans out.
Thanks for reading!
PS: A note of advice: I would advise that anybody looking to buy the i10 Automatic should buy the Asta instead of the Sportz ONLY if they want airbags, ABS and sunroof. The other additions over the Sportz are only for the brochure, not for the real world. For us the Asta was worth it because our primary interest was the airbags and ABS. |