SA Roadtests
South Africa
ctjag8
This is the home of automobile road tests in South Africa. We drive South African cars, SUVs and LCVs under South African conditions. It also just happens that most of the vehicles we drive are world cars as well, so what you read here probably applies to the models you can get at home.
*To read one of our road tests, just select from the menu on the left.
*Please remember too, that prices quoted were those ruling on the days I wrote the reports.
Pics supplied
Published in The Witness Motoring on Wednesday February 1, 2012
For the launch report and more technical information, click here
To read about the 2014 Hatchback click here
Pedigree: This is the seventh generation of Hyundai Accent that started out as the company’s first car, the Pony, in 1976. It arrived in South Africa during the mid-nineties and developed an almost cult following thanks to service levels, provided by the then-local importer, that went way beyond accepted norms of the time. The present generation, code named RB, was released in its home country in November 2010 and reached our shores during September 2011.
The engine: It’s the same all-aluminium, 1591cc, DOHC, 16-valve, VVT “Gamma” motor with returnless multipoint fuel injection as fitted to the i20. It develops 91 kW of power at 6300 rpm and 156 Nm of torque at 4200 rpm. Transmission choices are between Hyundai’s own five-speed manual- or four-speed automatic gearboxes. This is part of the company’s competitiveness strategy; the steel mill that makes the sheetmetal is in-group, as is the company that produces most of the components. Pressings are done in the assembly plant too, so there is very little on-cost pressure from outside sources.
The body: A conventional four-door sedan with boot, it follows the currently popular coupé styling adopted by most manufacturers. It is 4370 mm long on a wheelbase of 2570 mm, 1700 mm wide and 1470 mm high. Suspension is by means of McPherson struts with stabiliser, coil springs and gas-filled shock absorbers in front, with a coupled torsion beam axle, coil springs and gas-filled shock absorbers at the rear. Brakes are 256 mm ventilated discs up front with 262 mm solid discs at the back. Four-wheel, four-channel ABS with EBD is standard.
The experience: The basic GL fleet car might be a little starved of today’s “vital necessities,” but this GLS and its auto-box sister are pretty well taken care of. In no particular order, it has two airbags, an onboard computer, steel wheels with plastic caps, keyless entry, filtered, manual air conditioning, a non-RDS radio and CD player with USB and auxiliary connectors (an iPod cable is supplied with the car), power windows front and rear with one-touch operation for the driver, outside mirrors are warmed and adjust electrically but fold manually, rear parking assistance, and Bluetooth for your phone or wireless streaming of music. Once inside, central locking is by means of a button but all doors unlock automatically on switching off. The driver’s seat adjusts vertically and the steering wheel adjusts for rake and reach.
While no Nürburgring contender, the Accent has perfectly adequate steering- and road feel for its intended audience. The boot is nicely shaped and at 389 litres, capable of swallowing most families’ usual paraphernalia – even a golf bag or two. Rear seatbacks fold in the usual 60:40 configuration to accommodate larger loads. The coupé-like styling looks good, but restricts headroom for rear seat passengers. The five-speed manual gearbox is silky-smooth, with well-spaced ratios. It’s geared for about 3500 rpm at 120 in top, giving it easy roll on tractability. Maintaining cruising speed in fifth up Key Ridge is no problem.
In short: While not fitted with every toy in the box, this latest Accent is a solid and well-equipped midlevel, small-to-medium car that’s worth a second look.
The numbers
Price: R164 900
Engine and power levels: See text
Zero to 100 km/h: 10,2 seconds
Maximum speed: 190 km/h
Real life fuel consumption: About 6,9 l/100 km
Warranty: 5 years/150 000 km
Service plan: 5 years/90 000 km at 15 000 km intervals
This is a one-man show, which means that road test cars entrusted to me are driven only by me. Some reviewers hand test cars over to their partners to use as day-to-day transport and barely experience them for themselves.
What this means to you is that every car reviewed is given my own personal evaluation and receives my own seat of the pants judgement - no second hand input here.
Every car goes through real world testing; on city streets littered with potholes, speed bumps and rumble strips, on freeways and if its profile demands, dirt roads as well.
My articles appear every Wednesday in the motoring pages of The Witness, South Africa's oldest continuously running newspaper, and occasionally on Saturdays in Weekend Witness as well. I drive eight to ten vehicles most months of the year (press cars are withdrawn over the festive season - wonder why?) so not everything gets published in the paper. Those that are, get a tagline but the rest is virgin, unpublished and unedited by the political-correctness police. Hope you like what you see, because there are no commercial interests at work here. As quite a few readers have found, I answer every serious enquiry from my home email address, with my phone numbers attached, so I do actually exist.
I am based in Pietermaritzburg, KZN, South Africa. This is the central hub of the KZN Midlands farming community; the place farmers go to buy their supplies and equipment, truck their goods to market, send their kids to school and go to kick back and relax.
So occasionally a cow, a goat or a horse may add a little local colour by finding its way into the story or one of the pictures. It's all part of the ambience!
Comments?
Want to ask a question, comment or just tell me you thoroughly disagree with what I say? That's your privilege, because if everybody agreed on everything, the world would be a boring place. All I ask is that you remain calm, so please blow off a little steam before venting too vigorously. Email me from here
This site is operated by Scarlet Pumpkin Communications in Pietermaritzburg.
Unless otherwise stated, all photographs are courtesy of www.quickpic.co.za
Copyright this business. All rights reserved.
SA Roadtests
South Africa
ctjag8