The IT Nerd

So I’ve come to the end of my week long review of the 2018 Hyundai Accent GLS sedan and I walk away from this review very, very impressed. It drives, looks and feels for the most part like a vehicle that is way above the sub-compact class at a price point that’s in line the that class. It’s main competitors are going to be the Honda Fit, Toyota Yaris, Kia Rio, and Ford Fiesta. But the Accent is likely going to rise above those vehicles.

My final fuel economy was 8.1 L/100KM’s which is pretty impressive considering that I made liberal use of the 1.6L engine’s torque while driving in a mix of city roads and highways, not to mention rush hour traffic, and it had winter tires which is usually Kryptonite to fuel economy.

The 2018 Hyundai Accent starts at $14,599. The GLS trim level that I drove this week goes for $21,099. I should also note that there’s a hatchback version available that looks equally as good as the sedan version.

Quite simply Hyundai has nailed it with the Accent GLS. If you’re in the market for a sub-compact vehicle, head to your nearest Hyundai dealer and test drive one. I guarantee you that you will likely be driving away with an Accent.

The 2018 Hyundai Accent GLS is a sub-compact car packed with healthy amount of technology in it. Let’s start with the safety aspects of the vehicle:

• It has a back up camera with excellent clarity and a great range of vision. It also has lines on the screen to help you to position your car when backing into a parking space or parallel parking.
• You get autonomous emergency braking which will bring the Accent GLS to a stop if it detects an object in front of it, and you take no action to avoid said object.
• You get automatic headlights so that you never forget to turn the headlights on or off.
• Six airbags are standard.

The only thing that is missing from all this safety tech is tire pressure monitoring. While not required here in Canada, it is odd in 2018 to see a car without it.

The Accent GLS also comes with a lot of technology to make life easier for you:

• Android Auto and Apple CarPlay are included which is important as there’s no built in navigation. That sounds like a negative. But it is not because most people I know who have access to Apple CarPlay or Android Auto in their cars never use the built in navigation system. Thus nothing is likely lost by its omission. It gets served up on an 7″ screen which is extremely sharp, has great contrast and is viewable in all lighting conditions. The infotainment system user interface was easy to navigate and didn’t display any lag whatsoever. That was completely in line with other Hyundai products that I’ve tried recently.
• There’s a six speaker audio system that sounds good as I had no complaints when I was listening to radio or tunes from my iPhone. You can serve up AM,FM, audio from your phone via USB (which will charge your phone) or Bluetooth, or SirusXM Radio.
• Hyundai to my surprise has included the smart trunk feature in the Accent GLS. Simply walk up to the trunk with the proximity key (as the vehicle has keyless entry and push button start), stand behind the trunk for three seconds and the trunk pops open. While you still have to flip it up to allow you to load your stuff as the trunk isn’t powered (and to be clear, nor do I expect it to be powered), it’s a handy feature.

The final part of this review will tie up some loose ends and I’ll give you my closing thoughts on the Accent GLS Sedan. Stay tuned for that tomorrow.

The interior of the Hyundai Accent GLS sedan is very functional, but it has a upscale feel to it. Let me illustrate how by walking through the interior:

The doors have pockets for bottles as well as a cloth insert. The rest is a hard plastic.

You get power windows, door locks, and side mirrors.

The door handle looks like it’s chrome, but it’s good looking plastic that adds a level of class.

The footwell is roomy with a very welcome dead pedal. Just to the left is the latch to pop the hood.

The drivers seat is cloth, heated, and six way manually adjustable. The passenger gets  a four way adjustable seat that is heated. It was comfortable though I did wish for a bit more length for my mutant thighs. Once I set my driving position, I had plenty of headroom and legroom and visibility is good as well from the drivers seat. The cloth feels nice and is grippy as well.

The steering wheel in the Accent GLS sedan is leather wrapped and has all the controls that you need to control your phone, music, and cruise control. It is heated as well.

The gauges are easy to read and there’s a LCD screen in the middle the displays additional info about your drive.

You get a 7″ screen for the infotainment system and it is readable in any lighting condition. There’s also buttons for direct access to the functions of the infotainment system. Below that is the controls for the automatic HVAC system along with the controls for the heated seats and steering wheel. There’s also the drive mode switch as well and to the left is the engine start/stop button.

You get 12V outlet along with a USB port and an aux audio port. There’s a cubby for your phone or anything else that you need space for.

There’s a pair of cupholders between the seats….

…. That fits a Starbucks Venti sized coffee with ease.

There’s  decent sized glove box on board…..

……Along with a compartment for your sunglasses.

There’s a decent sized sunroof that’s powered too.

The back seat is capable of seating three kids or two adults. I acted as designated driver for my friends during our bar night and after repositioning my seat for additional leg room for the person behind me, and getting the biggest person who was 6′ 2″ in the front seat, I was able to get two people back here.

There’s a 12V outlet in the back.

The trunk is surprisingly deep as proven by this shopping trip….

…..Two bins of groceries along with some beer fit in here easily with space left over.

The only thing that could be considered a gripe is that the interior is a sea of hard plastic in an age where soft touch materials are a “thing” when it comes to car interiors. The flip side to that is that isn’t unusual in this class. Having said that, the interior is well put together and no issues were observed during my week with it, and it looks really good and coherent. Even bordering on upscale. The bottom line is that in the case of the Accent GLS, this is a better interior that is above what you should expect in this class of car. And that is a very good thing.

Tomorrow I will take a look at the technology in the Accent GLS sedan. Stay tuned!

The 2018 Hyundai Accent GLS is supposedly a sub-compact car. But apparently nobody told the people at Hyundai who designed this vehicle that as they dropped in the engine that you see above into it. This is a 1.6L direct injected four cylinder engine which serves up 130 HP and 119 pound feet of torque. You can get it with a six speed manual, or in my case a relatively smooth shifting automatic transmission (that can be shifted manually, but I would not bother doing so) to deliver power to the front wheels. And it works insanely well to get this car up to speed quickly, as well as giving you the punch that you need to pass transport trucks and slower drivers on the highway with ease. In short, there’s more than enough torque off the line and through the rev range all the way up to roughly 4200 RPM. That was a surprise to me as many cars in this class force you to modify your driving style by hugging the right lane because you can’t quickly get up to highway speed, or not passing the car that is holding you up because the power isn’t in the engine to pull that maneuver off safely. That’s not the case here.

Now add to that that the Accent chassis is full of Hyundai’s in house high strength steel. It makes this car not only incredibly responsive and even bordering on sporty from a handling perspective, but it also feels incredibly solid when rolling down the road. But I will note that some may find it to be too jarring over really rough roads as is the case here in Toronto. Thus make sure your test drive includes some rough roads. But having said that, these are traits that I usually don’t associate with sub-compact vehicles as they usually feel like flexible pieces of tin.

The ride is generally quiet with the only noises that I noted being a touch of wind noise at highway speeds that wasn’t objectionable, as well as tire noise that were likely coming off the Bridgestone Blizzak winter tires that were on my test vehicle. Something that I was grateful for seeing as it snowed during the early part of the week that I had the Accent. If you test drive it with all seasons, I suspect that you’ll have no complaints. Road feel is surprisingly good for a sub-compact car as I was able to easily figure out what the car was doing underneath me. Pedal feel is good as well with the throttle being easy to modulate and the brake being firm by equally as easy to modulate. Steering is light at low speeds, but heavier at high speeds which I did like. And if you want to have some fun, there’s a button that enables sport mode which amps up the steering feel to being a touch heavier, and the shifting of the transmission to make it a bit more aggressive and hanging on to gears longer.

In terms of fuel economy, I am getting 8L per 100 KM’s which is pretty good given I’ve been doing a mix of city, and highway driving which includes driving in rush hour. I expect that to improve as the week goes on.

Tomorrow, I will look at the interior of the Hyundai Accent GLS which from my perspective is above what you would expect from a compact car. Tune in tomorrow to see why I feel that way.

When I first picked up the 2018 Hyundai Accent GLS my first thought was that they took a Sonata or Genesis G80 and shrunk it. It certainly looks like either of those two vehicles depending on what angle you look at the Accent from. And that’s a good thing as both those vehicles are lookers. Which makes the Accent that I have this week a looker as well.

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This Accent doesn’t look like your typical sub-compact car. It looks like something far further up the food chain with a bigger presence than your average sub-compact car. I guarantee that this will turn heads when you roll up in it. Which is what it did at the world premier of the Accent last year. Adding to the upscale and classy feel of the Accent are two items:

In the GLS trim level, you get LED turn signals on the mirrors as well as…..

…. 16″ Alloy wheels. And if you look carefully, you’ll see disc brakes. Seeing as I am taking a picture of the rear wheel, that came as a bit of a surprise as that’s something that you don’t typically see on a sub-compact car.

My review of the 2018 Hyundai Accent GLS is made up of five parts:

• Exterior
• Engine, transmission, handling, fuel economy, and driving comfort
• Interior
• Technology in the vehicle
• Wrap up

The next part of this review will cover the engine, transmission and driving comfort. All of which are far above what you would expect from a sub-compact vehicle. Tune in tomorrow to see what I mean.

Every time I review a vehicle from Hyundai, I walk away impressed. It started with the Genesis… Long before they spun that off as a separate brand. Then the Tucson impressed me so much that I bought one. And both of those vehicles won IT Nerd Awards. Now it’s the 2018 Hyundai Elantra GT Sport Ultimate turn to continue that tradition. What the Korean company has come up with is a hot hatch that challenges VW and its famed GTI in pretty much every area and leaves a grin on your face that is so large, it will be seen from space. On top of that, they have some cool infotainment tech on board in the form of BlueLink. In short, it really fits the definition of what a hot hatch should be at a price point that is accessible to those who are looking for a car in this category. For those reasons, the 2018 Hyundai Elantra GT Sport Ultimate is very much a worthy winner of an IT Nerd Award for 2017.