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My Black elantra arrived on my birthday and that was a nice gift to myself, a CRDi which I bought after doing sufficient deliberation and with advice from Team-bhpians.
here's my feedback
Stability / shocks / Steering / Build quality & problems
Steering weird, not precise and has a lot of over / under steer due to power assisted steering of the elantra. Generally good for long drives, weird on short drives.
Shocks are fairly good, but there is a roll when compared to skoda octavia.
5/10 for build quality - water started to leak inside the car (the rain in chennai decided to come in for a ride too..), door visors flew away at 80kmph and the gaps in the finish of the car is way too bad - hyundai 's got a long way to go to match the quality of the japs.
These problems had my car visiting the Kun hyundai showroom almost 8 times. Unfortunately it went twice for a lame reason - they dirtied the interior as they had to remove and refix the windshield glass to fix the water leakage problem.
Look at this service list due to the problem
-1st service / 2nd day pondy kun hyundai - the test drive guys came back with the back visors missing. I realized that 10 mins into my drive, thought initially they flicked it. AC water was leaking in from the left
-2nd service/4th day at kun ambattur - they didnt know what was the problem but managed to fix it slightly
-1 week - rain started to pour in from the right. I had to use a towel to soak the water and drain it out
-3rd service - 1000 km external water leakage still not fixed
-4th service - fixed the water problem but all other job was left pending
-5th visit - partially cleaned the carpet.
-6th (they came down to my office, cleaned up the interiors but the sun film was still damaged slightly, visors werent replaced)
7th they cleaned the carpet but diritied the interiors. Tightened the clutch.
Overall dealer feedback 4/10
Kun hyundai personnel in chennai are courteous, do the job but just not what you expect after paying 9+ lakhs for a car that is elantra.
it takes patience to get your job done with them - the service guys are good but lack professionalism And the sales people go from answering every call to "hey i am busy / im driving" to cutting off your phone call
If you're buying a santro/gets/accent - go with them / otherwise just forget it.
Power / Fuel economy - the power of the car is extremely good. makes for pleasant driving experience if you have the stereo on, so that you can forget about the fact that it is a diesel car.
Fuel economy is also extremely good - I may be slightly off with the figures but it gives a cool 12kmpl in chennai with the traffic that we have hear.
audio / interiors - I really didnt like the interiors initially, but Ive started to live with it and like it eventually. The seats are though a little bit funny and visibility is generally bad while reversing etc. Not to forget, the stereo is just nice.
Drive - elantra is designed to devour the highway miles and it just does that with ease. ABS, TCS are the icing on the cake along with some extra frills added. overall a good initial luxury offering
My notes - the fake wood could be optional - it looks cheap, the seats could be more high at the back - visibility could be addressed if possible and nose grill - well its strange but I like it...
Its a good buy if you have a good service backup (which hyundai does have, but you'd be spending a lot of your office hours running behind to get silly things fixed) so please be careful - it really depends upon the dealer.
PS - i havent focussed too much on the positive aspects of the car - its already there in many forums.
Hope this review was useful.
Asif | 
11th November 2006, 01:40
