I always wait until late in the model year to buy a car, when the dealers are beginning to think about dumping their stock to get ready for the new models. So having had for five years a Toyota Prius, which would remain my wife's car, I was ready to get a stick shift again.
At the end of 2013, when I started shopping around, Hyundai stuck in my mind after I'd read some of the ratings, and my instinct was later confirmed by New Yorker economics correspondent James Surowiecki in a column describing Hyundai as a company that had gone from being a joke to selling 4 million cars annually in the U.S. My first impulse was to go for the Veloster Turbo with its 201-hp engine. One reservation I had, though, was wondering why Hyundai had dropped the "i" from Velocity: was it over-compensation for having put a "y" that was supposed to be silent in Hyundai? My only other reservation–more compelling–was that my wife was going to be very unhappy to see me in a car that youthful at my age.
So to mollify her, and still get something with a bit of juice to it and a six-speed manual transmission, I focused on Hyundai's four-door model, the Accent. The first Hyundai dealer I went to in L.A. tried insistently to sell me a more expensive model I wasn't interested in, so I left. At the second dealership I tried, the rep who dealt with inquiries originating on-line was more receptive; and when I downshifted during a test drive, to see how responsive the Accent was, he took the hint and let me tell him what my interest was. (Best of all was the deal I struck, getting my new Accent for under $13,000!)
My interest was more control. After growing up in Saint Louis, I'd lived in New York for 20 years, then in Chicago for another 20, before moving to Los Angeles 12 years ago. And I can say unequivocally that L.A. drivers are the worst anywhere. Most of them are trapped in their car for two hours every weekday, so they think of it as a second powder room where they can put on their make-up while driving, or as a mobile office in which to talk on the phone or send and receive text messages while going 50 mph. They're a menace to each other and to cyclists as well as pedestrians on crosswalks or even on sidewalks.
- Instrumented Test: Hyundai Accent Sedan and Hatchback
- Dealing in Myths: Debunking Common Car-Buying Advice
- Save the Manuals!
Plus which, on rare days when it rains, as it has this past fall for the first time in years, the naturally paranoid L.A. driver gets overly cautious and erratic in ways that are just as dangerous. Even the hi-tech systems now available in luxury cars that monitor how well you're driving wouldn't help L.A. drivers when streets are wet and they are automatically going from over-confident to incontinent. As someone who drives a standard-sized car, I also mistrust SUVs and try not to get trapped behind them, because they block your view of the traffic ahead. For safety's sake, I want to see at least three cars ahead of me.
The best way to avoid such hazards while keeping control of your own car is to hit the clutch, not the brake. Of course, downshifting is only wise if you prevent the clutch from having to bear the brunt of the deceleration. I first learned to downshift on a 10-year-old MG TD that I got in 1960. Downshifting that car required well timed double-clutching, because if you missed your shift you could end up fishing for gear teeth in the gearbox with a magnet. The deft touch that downshifting required was ameliorated, of course, by the introduction of synchromesh, which was perfected by Porsche in the early 1950s but didn't become standard on all cars until years later. Even then, the strain on the transmission was not entirely avoided unless you brought the rpm up as high as they needed to be before you let out the clutch in the lower gear. This, still, I religiously try to do.
Running up and down through the gears has the double advantage that it not only gives me better control of my car in traffic, but also makes driving much more fun. It focuses my mind on what I'm doing rather than the irritations one might face at the office or the disastrously wavy line you're drawing with your mascara. My Hyundai and I rest our case.
from Car and Driver Blog http://ift.tt/nSHy27
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