HATCHING A GREAT IDEA
The stylish Hyundai Accent
Once, the subcompact car was something grudgingly settled for, when one’s budget had been stretched beyond the point of no return. While it may have been cheap, cheerful it wasn’t.
Little effort was put into exterior styling, beyond the minimally functional, and interiors were rarely more than dismal swaths of dreary, cheap plastic. Nobody expected it to be anything more than what it appeared: an economic compromise.
But something happened during the past decade.
People came to the realization that their resources — and the planet’s — were finite, that transportation needs could be met sufficiently and efficiently on a smaller scale.
Finding favour among urban dwellers and the environmentally conscientious, small cars became a choice instead of a last resort. The segment exploded, and the resulting competition led to enormous changes in quality, innovation, and customer expectations.
Today’s compact cars often boast features once seen only in premium brands, and if cabin materials reflect their price points, designers go to great lengths to use them in stylish and imaginative ways.
This week’s test car, the 2015 Hyundai Accent, is a good example.
Previous generations of Hyundai’s smallest entry went from woefully ugly to acceptably forgettable. But Hyundai’s Fluidic Sculpture design ethos reshaped the Accent into one of the most stylish cars in its segment.
This particular Accent is the new-for-2015 Sport Appearance Package trim, which includes all the features of the mid-range GL and adds sunroof, fog lights and 16-inch alloy wheels. The GL model’s base price is $17,799, and the Sport Appearance Package is $18,849, a $1,050 difference. It’s wrapped in a cheery Yellow Sunflower paint that’s new for this year.
Inside the Accent, you’ll find plenty of hard plastics, but they’ve been moulded into creative surfaces and textures with plenty of attention to design and function. There’s no pretence of luxury here. Niceties such as leather seating and navigation are unavailable on the Accent, but you can get them on its sister car, the Kia Rio. But that doesn’t mean that the Accent’s cabin is without charm.
Seating may be cloth, but it’s attractively patterned and the front ones are heated. There’s a lot more room overhead than you’d expect from a car that doesn’t look that tall.
The steering wheel telescopes (not all competitors do), there’s hands-free Bluetooth, remote power entry, cruise control, a power sliding sunroof, steering wheel-mounted audio controls and air conditioning.
Rear seats split 60/40 to produce 600 litres of cargo space, which is about mid-pack for the segment.
The Accent has neither flashy touch screen nor navigation. It’s fairly simple to pair a smartphone and channel the turn-by-turn app through the Accent’s sound system, but the caveat is increased data usage. The communication between my iPhone and the Accent’s connectivity system was a bit wonky, as incoming phone calls would sometimes sever the navigation connection and only rebooting the car would re-establish it.
There’s no rear-view camera, which could be of concern to some buyers. The Accent’s tapered roofline and small rear window result in poor rearward visibility.
On the road, the Accent is well mannered and has the sort of handling you’d expect: soft enough to be comfortable without inducing a lot of wallow. The suspension has a shock and struts with sway bar setup in front and a simple torsion beam in the rear. Steering feel is solid and weighty (which I liked) but utterly devoid of feedback (which I didn’t).
There’s a nice level of sound deadening when it comes to wind noise and vibration, but the tinny sound of rocks or ice pinging off its undercarriage give away the Accent’s budget lineage.
With 138 horsepower and 123 pound-feet of torque, the Accent boasts best-in-segment power. However, the six-speed automatic transmission tends to keep it in the lower rev range to conserve fuel, which makes it seem rather lethargic at times. Knock the shift lever over to sport and drop it down a few gears and the Accent can zip along nicely.
With extra power comes extra fuel consumption. The Accent’s official combined rating is 7.8 L/100 km, and this go-round they’re being truthful as that’s pretty much what I averaged. But the roomier Nissan Versa Note and Honda Fit boast combined ratings of 6.7 L and 6.5 L, respectively.
During a four-hour road trip through a miserable snow and ice storm, our highway consumption dropped to 6.1 L/100 km, mostly because traffic conditions forced us to keep it below 70 km/h the entire way. But the trip itself was warm and pleasant, the cloth seats remaining comfortable for the duration of the long drive.
In this highly competitive segment, there are a lot of choices. Some offer better utility, and others are more fuel efficient. But the Hyundai Accent is a stylish little car offering plenty of features, and with its low base price and terrific five-year warranty it’s definitely worth considering.