Aussie Motoring

Of course Hyundai - the car company - is not in meltdown. But back in December I wondered should I be thrilled when I found that a part of my Hyundai Grandeur had melted and was having a very adverse effect on the acceleration.

It’s been so bad that our normally very responsive car has turned into something rather sluggish and finding a replacement took some time - our mechanic is great with motors but maybe not so good at remembering that he’s supposed to be tracking down a rather rare part.

But finally he did and late last week he came back to us with a price - $1,000 for a part about the size of a matchbox. You’ll see it in this photo.

Now even though that little solenoid is actually attached to the small silver bit by two bolts - and the small silver bit is attached to the manifold by three more bolts - the local Hyundai dealer claims that to replace it we’ve got to buy the whole manifold assembly … for $1,000.

To be honest we’ve not had a good experience with our local Hyundai dealer over the years and we weren’t surprised to be given a price like that. So now we’re trying wreckers and other Hyundai dealers because … well … do you have a thousand bucks to spend on a solenoid that needs to be replaced because the original one melted?

Holden and Ford have long been Australian icons and they have a very vocal following among motoring enthusiasts … but out in the real world they just plain suck … and it’s official … almost.

It seems that a comsumer website here in Australia - ProductReview.com.au asked owners to rate their vehicles in a number of categories including comfort and reliability. The score was out of five and the results were not good for the homegrown product.

Ford could only manage ninth spot while Holden did even worse coming in at number 15. Subaru topped the poll, Mitsubishi came second and even Hyundai managed a fourth spot.

I’m afraid I’m not currently feeling all warm and fuzzy about Hyundai. We finally got a price on the melted part for our Grandeur that I mentioned way back here - it’s a bit that for some obscure reason has partially melted.

It’s only about the size of a matchbox but it’s going to be a very very expensive matchbox - the part alone costs $1000.00. Yep, that’s right, it’s not a typo - it really is going to cost one thousand dollars.

So right now, from my point of view - if Holden and Falcon suck then so does Hyundai.

… that my 2000 Hyundai Grandeur has developed a fault that no one has heard of before?

by Stuart Livesey

For the latest on this story see Hyundai Meltdown

Our 2000 Hyundai Grandeur has been running a little sluggish lately and She who must be obeyed and who only knows two speeds (flat out and stop) decreed that it must be fixed - it was spoiling her driving experience.

So off I toddled to the mechanic this morning who took it for a test run and found that it seemed to be ‘a little flat’. I thought it might have been the plugs and so did he and after checking the service record it definitely is time for the plugs to be replaced … but wait … there’s more.

Tucked away under the manifold cover towards the back of the motor on the driver’s side is a small electric motor. According to the experts the motor controls the ‘variable throat’ on part of the fuel injection system and in our Grandeur the top of that motor appears to have melted.

The mechanic rang his contact at Hyundai and was told that no one has ever had that problem in a Hyundai Grandeur before … so there’s no cheap alternative but to buy a new one and no one knows what the price of that little electric motor might be.

So while he’s waiting for Hyundai to get back to him with a price our guy is calling a few wreckers to see if there’s a second-hand part available.

I guess I’ll know if I’m thrilled or not when I get the bad news about the cost of the part in the New Year.

Still, things could be worse. While I was picking the Grandeur up the mechanic got a phone call from another regular customer who had just destroyed the gear box in his Nissan Patrol … and he was planning on going away in it over Christmas.

In the town where I live most decent mechanical repair shops were closing at lunchtime today and not re-opening till January 2.

Hyundai outsold Mitsubishi and moved up another place to claim sixth spot in the Australian car market in April with 3965 vehicles sold and a 5.8 percent share of the market, up 1.1 percent over April 2005.

Year-to-date, Hyundai has overtaken Honda and also moved up a place to sixth with 16,073 sales, accounting for 5.3 percent market share, 0.6 percent more than this time last year, according to official car industry figures for April released today by VFACTS.

At April’s end, Hyundai was up nine percent over the same period in 2005 while the 2006 total market was down 3.4 percent to date.

Hyundai was the only top ten car brand which sold more vehicles this April compared with April last year.

This was also Hyundai’s highest April sales in the last seven years.

In the SUV segment, Hyundai leapt to fifth in April from seventh in March, with Tucson moving up to fourth most popular Compact SUV from sixth in March.

Hyundai retained its fifth rank in passenger car sales with a year-to-date market share moving up 1.0 percent to 7.2 percent.

At last I have actually seen one up close and personal and my wife and I sat in one at the Brisbane Motor Show while an eager young salesman practiced his sales pitch on us.

And our impression was … for $42,990 we will quite happily stick with our 2000 model..

My wife’s impression of the driver’s seat was that it was very comfortable. My impression of the passenger seat was that I’ve been more comfortable and clapped-out cabs.

Those motoring journalists who thought that the woodwork around the 2000 Grandeur was overdone should be quite happy with the woodwork in the new model – it looks as though it was added as an afterthought. Much of the woodwork from the 2000 model has been replaced with metal grillwork that reminded both of us of the back of a cheap computer box.

The choice of colours for the interior trim was curious. The car was black, the seats and trim were a light cream/caramel colour while the console between the front seats has some purple in it.

Speaking of the seats – here was a display model at a major motor show and the upholstery on one of the front seats was crinkled and didn’t look as though it fitted properly

The model certainly comes with some nice additions – side airbags were impressive and the courtesy light that comes on when the passenger opens the vanity mirror in the sun visor was interesting but over-all, we were disappointed.

But of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and you’re impressions could be quite different to ours.

Despite what we were told by a salesman at our local Hyundai dealer several weeks ago the new Grandeur is here and it is being advertised by the local dealer. So what do we have and is it really going to be worth the money.

Sadly if you go to the Hyundai website you’re not going to see much more of the car this this:

and just for a comparison here was the last model Grandeur that was sold in Australia:

Call me old-fashioned if you like but the new body shape does not have me rushing off to the dealer with my cheque book in hand. But then beauty is in the eye of the beholder and you might think that the new body style is wonderful.

There are two models in the range - the V6 and the Limited with prices of $42,990 and $46,990. Equipment levels in both models are good and, unlike the previous Grandeur, both models have leather trim as standard.

One thing that I certainly appreciated in the old Grandeur was the leg-room for both front and rear passengers and that seems to have been carried over to the new Grandeur too. Boot space is good and you would be surprised what you can pack into the boot of one of these cars. The security officer at the Bass Straight ferry terminal at Deveonport couldn’t believe it either when he looked in our boot when we were moving from Tasmania to Queensland.

Everything seems to look rather good in the new car until you get it out onto the road where several journalists have noted that it’s handling and acceleration leave something to be desired. I’ve yet to drive one but my old Grandeur is not the fastest off the mark but still accelerates well at speed and apparently handles much better than the new version.

For a full and comprehensive road test of the new Hyundai Grandeur go here.

I guess the one unanswered question about the new Grandeur is what Hyundai will do if sales don’t reach the target. I can remember reading a report in 2000 where the head of the company that was importing them at the time assured potential purchases that they would do nothing to undermine the value of the car.

A month or so after we bought ours the importers started selling Grandeurs to car hire companies and today our $41,000 Grandeur XG is worth less than $9,000 (and that is with lower than average kilometres on the clock).

Motoring journalists do not have an easy job. You might think that there would better job than driving around in new cars all the time. But it must be so difficult to remain objective about each individual car when you do that all the time.

I mean how can you remain objective about a Kia Sorento as you drive it this week when the car you drove last week was a Lancer Evolution?

Despite those problems most motoring writers in Australia do manage to remain objective and that’s why it’s interesting to see what some motoring journos consider to be the worst cars of 2005.

Kia Sorento - Stephen Scorby considered that calling the Sorento a lemon was an insult to citrus fruit and suggested that the car was made out of egg cartons and pipe cleaners

Kia Sportage - Paul Pottinger found that both he and Stephen Scorby became highly agitated when they tackled their first roundabout in a Sportage.

Nissan Pathfinder - Samantha Stevens found that driving the Pathfinder reminded her of driving a tractor with a flat tyre. (Now having actually done that makes me wonder whether any vehicle certified safe to use on our roads could really be that bad)

Holden Barina - Isaac Bober decided that the Daewoo sourced Barina was a huge disappointment and a “pathetic imitation” of what the market once loved back in the beep beep Barina days.

I don’t know about those vehicles, I haven’t driven any of them yet, but I began to find that my Hyundai Grandeur XG started to suck majorly as soon as it ran out of warranty in March this year. It was then that I realised that the Grandeur wasn’t really a car but more a collection of very expensive spare parts that moved along the road in very close proximity to each other.