Hyundai's Poor Accent

The new subcompact Hyundai Accent hatchback is cheap—and that's how it looks and feels

by Thane Peterson

Editor's Rating:

The Good: Low price, safety features, excellent warranty

The Bad: Noisy engine, pokey acceleration, hard-to-access rear seat

The Bottom Line: Comparison-shop before buying

Reader Reviews

• View Slide Show

Up Front

The idea behind this new Made-in-Korea Hyundai Accent is a good one: Offer a hatchback version of the Accent sedan, which was revamped for the '06 model year, giving it a sportier suspension and steering to endow it with some driving flair. Then load the car up with standard features and keep the price under $15,000.

Can't beat it, right? Trouble is, there are tons of better new Japanese subcompact cars hitting the market right now, including Toyota's (TM) Yaris (see BusinessWeek.com, 6/14/06, "The Judgment of Yaris"), Honda's (HMC) Fit (see BusinessWeek.com, 8/21/06, "Nice Fit"), and Nissan's (NSANY) Versa (see BusinessWeek.com, 9/25/06, "Nissan's Nice Versa"). General Motors' (GM) revamped and much-improved Aveo is just out, too.

Little wonder that that sales of the Accent, which had seemed destined to be a hit, are far from booming. Some other Hyundai models, such as the Elantra and the all-new Santa Fe SUV (see BusinessWeek.com, 10/10/06, "Hyundai's Santa Fe is Coming to Town"), are doing very well this year, with October sales up 13.5% and 22.2%, respectively.

But Hyundai only sold 2,010 Accents in October, down 30% from October, 2005. For the first 10 months of this year, total, the Accent's sales dropped to 30,099, down 19.3% from the same period in 2005. Even in a transition year for the model, that's a pretty weak performance.

On the surface, the Accent is a lot like its main rivals. It's a front-wheel-drive car with a stubby front end and a relatively roomy interior that yields considerable cargo capacity when you fold the rear seats down. It gets good mileage, too, of course. My test car, an Accent SE with a manual transmission, was rated to get 32 mpg in the city and 35 on the highway. In a stretch of 112 miles of mixed driving I only got 25 mpg, but I did a lot of heavy accelerating.

The Accent comes in three formats. The budget model is the GS two-door hatchback which starts out at just $10,995 with a stick shift and $11,995 as an automatic, and comes standard with eight-way adjustable seats, a tilt steering wheel, and halogen headlights.

You can either add options á là carte or move up to the SE two-door hatchback. It starts at $14,495 with a stick shift and $15,495 with an automatic, and comes with air conditioning, a leather-wrapped steering wheel, power windows, doors and locks, a CD player, sports-tuned suspension and steering, antilock brakes, and 16-in. alloy wheels. The third format is the GLS, a four-door sedan version that starts at $13,145 with a stick shift and $14,145 with an automatic.

Hyundai offers one of the best customer-protection plans in the business: A five-year/60,000-mile bumper-to-bumper warranty and unlimited free roadside assistance for five years. And even the low-end Accent GS also comes standard with front, side, and roof-mounted side curtain airbags.

To compare, side curtain airbags—an important safety innovation in small cars because they protect you from head injuries in an accident—come standard on the Honda Fit and Nissan Versa, but are only available as an option on the Yaris and aren't available at all on the Aveo.

Feature-laden as it is, though, the Accent seems to be competing mainly on price. According to the Power Information Network, the Accent is selling for an average of $13,543, vs. $13,718 for the Aveo, $14,383 for the Yaris, $15,512 for the Versa, and $16,668 for the Fit. (Like Business Week and BusinessWeek.com, the Power Information Network is a unit of McGraw-Hill (MHP)).