Hyundai's Decent Accent

The Accent is solid, eager, nicely equipped, cute, practical, pretty sporty—and may just change your mind about small cars

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Chevette. Omni. Metro. Le Car. Colt. Vega. Pinto. Cricket. Storm. Escort. Horizon. Festiva. F-10. Justy.

What do these have in common? They were $%& boxes each and every one. Even esteemed names like "Civic" were crappy in their early iterations. Through the 1970s and '80s these cars could be observed rusting into oblivion, and blowing clouds of oil smoke as they strained to achieve highway speeds before getting run over by semis and fuel-swilling V-8-powered Detroit lead sleds. (Please save your indignantly rose-colored e-mails...these cars did offer, albeit rarely, new technologies and driving grins. The author put over 120,000 miles on an Omni GLH-S, so he knows.)

What we have for evaluation today is the 2007 Hyundai Accent SE. It is most certainly not a piece of junk. Our fresh example sported no rust and refused to blow any blue smoke. As a matter of fact, this little car pushed everything we knew about cheap cars right off the shelf and into the trash can. This is what to think about the inexpensive Accent SE: It's solid, eager, nicely equipped, cute, practical, and pretty sporty.

The basic package

Remember when cars didn't have standard power steering, power brakes, power windows, air conditioning, rear-window defrosters, power door locks, tilt steering columns and even FM radios? Generally speaking, economy cars into the 1980s were so. How things have changed. Our as-tested Accent SE offers all of the aforementioned as standard plus side airbags, side-curtain airbags, anti-lock brakes, fog lights, illuminated vanity mirrors, heated outside mirrors, 172-watt AM/FM/CD audio system, cabin air filter, and a leather-wrapped steering wheel. All of this, and it stickers for just under $14,000.

Dimensionally, the Accent packs more interior room into its stubby 159.3-inch overall length than the much larger Chevrolet Cobalt or Ford Focus coupe models. There is nothing cramped about the interior, and even the rear seating area offers plenty of leg, head, and shoulder room for an average adult male.

While not impressive in the same sense as the hand-matched wood grain on the dash of a Rolls-Royce, the interior of the Accent is impressive for what this car is. Materials feel durable and look good. In decades past, inexpensive cars were bastions of awful interior fabrics. (This author recalls a 1978 Dodge Colt he owned with houndstooth fabric in red, white, black, and maroon. He also recalls the vehicle being delivered new with a bag of white rice in the glove box and a note of appreciation from the Mitsubishi plant in Japan .) The cloth covering the seats in the Accent, in contrast, looked and felt good. Ditto for the door and dash panels. The silver accents helped, as did the leather on the steering wheel.

All, however, was not perfect, as interior panel fitment could have been better. As can be seen in our photos, the gap between the driver door panel and the dash was about half that of the opposite side. While an obvious shortcoming, this is not a deal breaker for a $14,000 car, just a reminder that it is a $14,000 car.

Power and performance

Power is a term used loosely with entry-level cars. Few of them are ever really powerful. The Accent's 1.6-liter four-cylinder features double overhead cams, the expected 16 valves that go with two cams, and variable valve timing. Horsepower tops at 110 at 6000 rpm and torque peaks at 106 pound-feet at 4500 rpm.

Up to about 40 mph, the Accent feels pretty zippy. Short and closely spaced gears help that happen, but the pull to highway speeds reminds you that this is an economy car, not a performance car. Economy, by the way, comes in at 32 mpg city, 35 mpg highway.

The front strut/rear torsion beam suspension provides handling that goes with the power - it's zippy. Little cars like this are fun to toss around. There is truth to the axiom that it's more fun to drive a slow car quickly than a quick car slowly.

The SE package is an option on top of the base Accent that includes some real hardware changes. The featured goods are a larger front sway bar (24 mm vs.