2,124 km - Sunday drive

I'm really a motorcyclist - not a "car nut".

And what do motorcyclists do on a summer Sunday morning but go for a ride?

So the two of us decided to take "AZBA the Accent" for a spin around some of the rural back roads between here (Georgetown) and the Vintage Motorcycle Museum at Brantford. (That's me in the picture with AZBA under the gun at the Military and Motorcycle Museum in Brantford.)

This leisurely circuit visited not only Brantford, but also the village of Lynden - which must have the longest main street for a village of its size in the province, the small and picture-perfect town of Paris (on the Grand river, not the Seine) and the hamlet of St. George.

All the roads were 40 to 80 km/h speed limits and there were lots of corners and stop signs so the gearbox on the Accent got a good workout.

It's hard to fault the gearbox shifting action. Probably won't do much for the gas mileage with all those stops, starts and shifts, though.

In fact, it worked out to 7.15 L/100 km.

1,901 km - Allan Johnson takes over -- first servicing

I arrived at Attrell Hyundai around 3 pm, got the key from the nice people at the service counter (who charged us $37.73 for the first inspection and oil change on the car) and went outside to get acquainted with AZBA 264, the Wheels long-term Accent L 3-doo r test car.

Now, I'm not really superstitious but it was parked in space #13 in the lot. None of the other parking spaces were numbered, which seemed a bit strange.

Anyway, I took a few minutes to study the controls and adjust the seat. I would have guessed that Jim Kenzie had been driving this car, even if I didn't know it - the outside rear view mirrors were set for the extreme wide-angle rear view he has been promoting for decades.

Then I began the 20 minute trip back home, which turned into an hour-long detour off Hwy. 7 due to the kindly Peel police closing the road and diverting the Friday rush hour traffic into a new local subdivision. There are probably still people lost in there.

I got used to the Accent's clutch and five-speed manual in a hurry.

Although I grew up with manual transmissions 50 years ago, our recent cars and vans have been automatics (all my motorcycles are still manuals).

As Kenzie pointed out, I am a motorcyclist and normally write for Wheels on old bikes. But you'll see in the next week or so if I have anything interesting to say about economy cars. I have owned some of them over the years.

Oh, Jim! I saw the chocolate on the back seat as I was trying out the seat-folding system. A little cold water on an absorbent paper towel cleaned it up - and also removed the smaller spot on the carpet.

Looks like the seat material has some sort of treatment on it to repel such things.

I'll clean "AZBA the Accent's" windows tomorrow.

1,897 km - the Hand-Off

The Accent moves on down the relay team this weekend. I dropped it off at Attrell Hyundai in Brampton for its first oil change this morning, and Allan Johnson, who writes for Wheels mostly on old motorcycles, will pick it up tomorrow.

The last fill-up was 28.69 litres, yielding mileage on the last tankful at 7.5 litres per 100 km - consistent within a tenth of a decimal point to what I got in my week-plus in the car, which was comprised of a mix of highway and city driving.

I even had it washed! (The ground-in chocolate from, I still presume, one of Richardson's kids, is still in the back seat. I don't do upholstery.)

Initial impressions of the car - cute, fun to drive, nimble, well-equipped, efficient, noisy on the highway - have all been consistent too.

One more thing I must say about the Accent:

It has been flawless.

Not a single rattle, untoward noise, or bump in the night.

OK, it was a new car. OK, it still only has less than 2k km on it. And OK, you might think that a car which was destined to be raked over by some of Canada's toughest automotive journalists might have been fine-tooth-combed by Hyundai Canada before being turned loose on us.

But still - I get e-mails from new-car owners all the time about various things that are wrong with their cars upon delivery. Not on our little Accent.

How will it fare over the coming months?

We'll all find out, won't we?

Suffice it to say that at least one more Accent was sold, at least partially as a result of our experience in this car.

Enjoy, Allan!

BTW, the choice of Attrell Hyundai to do the maintenance was not accidental. The dealership is fairly convenient for both Allan and myself, and Dealer Principal Bob Attrell is also a Wheels regular. And in the six degrees of separation from Jim Kenzie game, Bob's father Bob Senior was my first racing instructor, back when racing licences were issued on stone tablets.

What else is out there?

We happened to have a Nissan Versa on test while we had the Accent.

Interesting comparison.

The Versa is a more expensive car, but not by that much, at least not in starting price (about a grand, not counting the cash price low-ball Hyundai deal).

The Versa is a lot bigger too - probably one of the best volume-per-dollar cars you can buy. It is quieter on the highway as well, something we're still not used to in the Accent (it always feels like it needs another gear).

Lady Leadfoot also prefers the seat comfort in the Versa over the Accent, although I don't mind the Hyundai's thrones.

One area where the Accent does score, especially for her, is the dual seat cushion height adjustment - the front and back of the cushion can be raised or lowered independently, which cannot be done in the Versa, at least not on the trim level we had. She had to put a cushion underneath her to see properly over the hood.

And if the two-door hatchback configuration of the Accent isn't for you, you can get the same cash price deal on the Accent sedan, or the mechanically-identical Rio sedan from sister company Kia. Or - and this would be my personal choice - the four-door hatchback Kia Rio5.

Still not sure why anyone would buy a subcompact car that was not a four-door hatchback, but obviously that's just me - they sell a lot of the other body styles.

NOTE: I have driven yet another test car to Detroit tonight so I don't know the exact kilometers on the Accent at this moment. I'll update that when I get back tomorrow.

1,516 km - another tankful

28.925 litres for 378 km translates into 7.65 L/100 km. Again. Got to give me points for consistency.

***

Shot a little video clip walk-around of the car yesterday. Did it as a huge thunder-and-lightning storm was raging north of the city. Had a great view of the pyrotechnics. Friends of mine were golfing at the time. Metal sticks in their hands. Um, wrong.

Just got the camera put away when the heavens opened up on us too.

Also wrote and filed a full road test of the car, which will appear this Saturday in the print edition of Wheels.

***

Noted another feature of the car - a swing-down arm rest for the driver, a la many SUVs or motorhomes. Again, rare-to-unheard-of at this price.

And both sun visors have vanity mirrors in them.

1,138 km - time to fill 'er up for the third time

A couple of days late getting this one posted. Sorry, folks.

Happy to be driving an economical car when it comes time to fill up though.

Let's do the math:

From the last fill it's gone 486 km. Divide that by 100, and divide the result into the 37.376 litres it swallowed.

If I've done his right, that's 7.69 litres per 100 km. For the unrepentant Imperialists, that converts to 36.7 miles per gallon.

Not bad, although not quite to the Transport Canada numbers of 7.4 city and 6.2 highway.

Note however that this is considerably better than Richardson got in his two tankfuls - not that I am the least bit competitive.

Am I THAT much better a driver than he is?

To be fair (why start now?) he drove the car mostly in town, while I had more highway klicks. Also, you should expect mileage to improve while a car is being broken in, maybe even for the first 15,000 km or so.

Our next tester is planning to "hypermile" the car - maximize economy at (almost) all costs. It'll be interesting to see what he scores.

***

The other day I called this car "the bronze cutie". Apparently, the official color is "Tango Red". There have been some questions over the years in certain circles about my colour vision, although I have always passed the racing/pilot's licence test with ease. Probably more of a definitional thing.

But this ain't red.

966 km - The Big Smoke

No no, not Big Smoke as in the engine blew up.

I took the little bronze cutie into Toronto for the first time today.

Freeways, traffic, city streets, small parking spots. Handled it all with aplomb.

Well, most of it. I did discover the car's main drawback (assuming we wil eventually all get over the fact that it doesn't have power door locks).

This car is noisy.

Mr. Editor said it had to struggle to do more than 120 km/h. Not so's I noticed. Purely in the interests of investigative journalism you understand, I discovered you could indeed join O. P. P. Commissioner Julian Fantino's Street Racer Brigade in this car.

But before his uniformed minions (OK, I'm self-censoring here...) would have the chance to lock you up and throw away the key, you would already have been punished aurally.

It's only turning about 3,500 r.p.m. at, um, common highway speeds. But that seems to be right in the middle of an harmonic vibration period for this engine. It actually gets less noisy the faster you go.

I tested a Kia Rio a couple of years ago - essentially the same car built by Hyundai's subsidiary - and it exhibited the same behaviour.

So either turn up the radio, or drive slower. Hey - it is an economy car.

763 km - Sharing the ride

Lady Leadfoot took the car to work today, and her opinions make it unanimous so far - decent little car, what more can you expect for the price, etc.

Not sure why we bothered with adding air conditioning. THIS is Global Warming?!?

For a real econo-hatch, there is some decent equipment in this car. The stereo system offers AM, FM, single-shot CD as well as the Aux input Mark mentioned for your iPod or whatever. Sound isn't great, but again - what can you expect?

Seat cushion height adjustment at both front and back (for the driver only).

There is also a tilt (not telescope) steering wheel, but why anyone would have it at anything but its highest setting I cannot imagine. Not unless you like pretending you're driving a motorboat, or you've got thighs like Twiggy.

Oh yeah, Richardson - did one of your kids grind a bit of chocolate bar into the rear seat cushion??

664 km - Jim Kenzie takes the wheel

As Mark Richardson says, you gotta love hatchbacks. So why don't Americans love hatchbacks?

Maybe they're just weird.

But I must say, I love four-door hatchbacks better than two-door hatchbacks.

With childproof locks now universal, there's no reason not to have four doors on a car like this.

The Aussies won't buy a two-door car unless it only has two seats. Makes sense.

Also, if you don't get in and out of the car through it - and I'm talking usually here, not some campus prank - then it isn't a door.

Hence this is NOT a "three-door hatchback".

The full review is aborning in my brain, but so far - essentially from Mark's house to mine, a distance of about 12 km - my opinions mirror his.

Continuing the International theme here, the Brits have a phrase for it - cheap and cheerful.

652 km - Second fill-up

THIS GAS: 16.8 litres / 208 km = 8.08 L/100 km

OVERALL GAS: 8.82 L/100 km

Time to give the car to Jim Kenzie for a proper review. Maybe he can get used to these independent door locks.