Gadgetory

sometimes when you want a major hit in the auto business you don't have to be hot-looking or super fast or anything superlative you just have to be a nice car let's see how they all-new heavily revised 2015 Hyundai Sonata goes after that bull's eye they hit it now the Sonata as you may recall got serious in the market with the 2009 model all of a sudden it became a real threat to Camry Accord Fusion and the rest but it always had this unfortunate Hyundai trait of looking a little bit ornamented shall we say just not a handsome car that's changed now and that's the big story on the outside of the new Sonata refined more urban lines now call your attention to a couple of exterior features first of all the panoramic roof which is optional even on this limited trim there's one bar in the middle but it opens up a lot of sky and an interesting take on the trunk just walk up to the rear of the car with the key in your pocket and stand there for three seconds and the trunk opens automatically if you don't recall what the previous Sonata look like here's a look now here's what we have today this is completely different kind of Teutonic it's got a little bit of an Audi layout to it it's clean its handsome it's modern its angular that theme continues now our cards pretty loaded up was a limited with almost every option CNET style navigation system as you see here Hyundai's always did a pretty good clean job of that and they've tended to have the fastest touchscreen response in the industry by a big margin I'm afraid to report that that's a little bit muted now it's just you wouldn't notice it watching me on camera here but I can tell you shut up just little milliseconds little heartbeats worth of difference or happening now when you touch the screen I will say this when you're in navigation mode it's got a new I believe split screen option plus auto zoom and a lot of things going on makes it kind of busy your standard audio is going to be iPod and USB and aux jack all down here in this new and large bin Sirius XM is standard and bluetooth streaming are also standard HD radio and more comes in an optional level which includes our navigation that we've got in here now check this out you don't recognize that little orange icon right there that sound hound let's say I'm listening to something on a station that doesn't do a good job up of putting those RDS tags on the screen so I can hit the SoundHound button and it's going to listen to the broadcast for certain amount of seconds here get a nice sample figures out what it is pulls it right up on the screen and it's a really cool tool to have in the car where you don't want to be fumbling with your app on your phone to do the same thing you can mark it as a favorite go back later figure out what it is there is something as advanced as an online buying store for the track just yet but maybe it's a matter of time this car also supports Siri eyes free with your iPhone and later in this model years run in 2015 they'll also support apple carplay they're one of the early adopters on that another interesting feature especially for a popularly priced car you've got start/stop and replay on satellite radio at 22 minute buffer here to let you capture and go back install the blue link telematics app and you get a wide array of sort of auto remote control functions and most importantly you can get a live online search utility that can tie into the car's navigation system there's also remote start via the app with the interesting wrinkle of a delay timer of 1 to 10 minutes now under the hood all sonatas continue on as four cylinders only this or the 2-liter turbo sport that's a different video here we have an interesting story the horsepower and torque have come down a little bit to 185 horse and 178 pound-feet of torque down 5 and 1 respectively but what Hyundai says they've done is move the responsiveness lower in the rpm band where real people drive not revving their car out to a yellow or red line but loafing along the numbers changed a bit as they did that these guys are all front-wheel drive and go out through a six-speed automatic with a little shift gate but there are no paddles on the wheel you've got some drive modes sport eco and normal very straightforward 0 to 60 happens in 8.1 seconds a car the way it's about 3400 pounds but delivering quite good fuel economy 24:35 you're not seeing any turbos no brake energy regeneration no electrification of any kind no auto start/stop pretty straightforward powertrain but gets it done now that whole theorem about just be a nice car really is where the sonata prints on the road its overall quietness and ride quality are really exemplary the power band is used for where I want it to be the transmission is unobtrusive it never leaves the car flat-footed when you need power there's a meaningful difference between eco normal and sport the steering is surprisingly heavy for a car made today of many cars have over assisted very light steering I think it's part of giving the car a feeling of more mass and more quality to the driver now the driver assist technologies are primarily passed if the one exception is your active cruise control which will go all the way down to a full stop with its own braking and back up to full freeway speed should conditions warrant what's interesting is what they've done with the blind spot technology here it's a little more um contemplative if you will when you have that on and it indicates that you do a turn with your stalk here it's going to read not just where cars are so if a car off your side is closing rapidly will have a different sensitivity toward warning that if it's not okay let's price our 2015 Sonata this heavily revised version we have a limited which is a really good place to start 27:3 with destination but there are two chunky options you've got to go for packages there really take it seen that style one as you can imagine is called the tech package that's 3500 bucks for the panoramic roof the 8 inch nav screen xenon high-intensity discharge headlights HD radio with infinity sound backing it up a heated steering wheel and ventilated seats and the ultimate package for the louver 1500 is a lot of your smart driving stuff adaptive cruise lane departure warning forward collision warning automatic high beams and rear park sensors on top of the already existing rear camera all in about 32 for recei net style Sonata limited the other one you want to look at however is the sport 2.0 T smaller but turbocharged engine more power roar to your performance in fact they think it'll be their biggest seller among all the sonatas bottom line is this is the Sonata that should end excuses for buying a this is an outstanding car in the top tier with all the other big boys don't forget they got a hell of a warranty five years 60,000 mile bumper to bumper and 10 100 powertrain we don't normally talk about warranties but this one is so outstanding it's worth a mention 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