First stop on yesterday’s Brian & Donna Buy A New Car Tour was the Hyundai dealer and first up for a test drive was the Sonata, the car I have been lust­ing after for some time. It’s assets are it is a big car, nice look­ing (inside and out), com­fort­able rid­ing, and quiet. On the debit side is it is big (Donna had to jack the seat up as far as it would go to see over the hood), com­fort­able rid­ing, and quiet (no real con­nec­tion to the dri­ving expe­ri­ence.) In short, it is a per­fect rental car. I felt a lit­tle like George Web­ber after an evening with Jenny Han­ley.

As we waited for our sales­man to get the keys for vehi­cle #2, the Elantra, we wan­dered the lot a bit and a bright yel­low Gen­e­sis Coupe caught Donna’s eye. This car was on my ini­tial list, but I crossed it off after (see­ing one in traf­fic one day) I queried Donna on its looks and she pooh-poohed it.

The Elantra it was smaller, but a bet­ter fit to what we are used to and still very nice look­ing inside and out, but it was not, as expected, as com­fort­able and quiet as its big brother. The deal breaker for us was that nei­ther of us could get com­fort­able in the seats.

Car num­ber three was a Gen­e­sis Coupe 2.0T Pre­mium with an auto­matic trans­mis­sion. Not the yel­low one, it was the 3.8 Track model and about 10 grand over our bud­get. Plus, while the yel­low is eye catch­ing and an awe­some color for a car, nei­ther of us want to own one, but we applaud those who do. Ahhh, this car is more like it. The Sonata was Papa Bear’s chair, too big and the Elantra was Baby Bear’s chair, too small, but the Gen­e­sis Coupe was just right. It was com­fort­able, there was gobs of inte­rior space and plenty of dri­ving expe­ri­ence for Brian. The Pre­mium level car would not be on our shop­ping list, the $4k uptick in price included only one thing of mar­ginal value, a sun­roof. The prox­im­ity key with push but­ton start turned Donna off and for me the nav sys­tem was the stum­bling block, I didn’t even look at it once and I’m not sure I want to have to push a but­ton say­ing I agree to any­thing just to drive to the store. But that said, the base 2.0T coupe was right up our alley, so this was the brochure we took home from the dealer and the one he wrote down on his sheet as what we were inter­ested in. In Mirabeau Blue.

Tomor­row I’ll let you know how it went at the next car dealer we vis­ited, Mazda.

When head­ing home after leav­ing the Mazda dealer on the Brian & Donna Buy A New Car Tour our route took us right by the KIA dealer. I waved at them as we went by. Donna sug­gested we go back and drive the Optima because we had a cer­tifi­cate to get a $25 gift card for test dri­ving one some­time dur­ing the months of Feb­ru­ary or March. I dou­bled back and parked next door in the used car area. A local radio sta­tion was doing a remote broad­cast from out front, loud urban hip-hop is not on any radio pre­set of ours, but they had a grill going and a sausage dog with a Sprite went down nice as we wan­dered the lot unmo­lested. The Optima had one strike against it going in, in that the col­ors it is avail­able in, with he excep­tion of the Spicy Red, were picked out by defect­ing mem­bers of the old Soviet Polit­buro — white, sil­ver, light gray, dark gray, dark red and black (it does come in a bright blue, but only in the high zoot turbo model.)

Walk­ing back towards the Miata after get­ting our fill of look­ing at the pine pollen cov­ered cars we passed right by the show­room and there was one sales­man stand­ing near the front door just star­ing off into the dis­tance. Donna said, “If he doesn’t approach us, we just keep on going.” I said, “Nah, I’ll walk up to him so we can test drive a car.” I showed him the cer­tifi­cate and asked if we could drive one. He looked at it kind of side­ways and said come on in and held the door for us. I’m not sure if his reac­tion to the cer­tifi­cate was, what is this or oh, no, not another one, but after about a five min­utes he came back out of the sales manager’s office with their part of the form filled in. He made a copy of my license and said, “I’ll be back up in a minute, let me get a car.” After another five minute wait, he pulled up in a Metal Bronze LX. The color isn’t half bad, but it is not going to going to get the neighbor’s all jeal­ous and oohing and aahing over it.

As I set about adjust­ing the rear view mir­rors (both inside and out) our friendly sales­man pro­ceeded to count off the inte­rior and exte­rior fea­tures of the auto­mo­bile from the back­seat. Unfor­tu­nately he kept that up for the entire 5 mile loop of our test drive. It was like he mem­o­rized the glossy brochure pro­duced by Kia’s mar­ket­ing depart­ment and was recit­ing it for us. He tripped him­self up though when he veered off the script and men­tioned that the Optima was recently picked the #1 best buy. Donna asked him by who and he didn’t have the answer, he hemmed and hawed and finally I vol­un­teered J.D Pow­ers and he said, “That’s it.” (I looked when we got home and it was really Cars.com 2 months ago.)

While not exactly appli­ance look­ing like a Camry, the Optima is kind of a wall­flower next to its cousin the Sonata. It’s sav­ing grace is that it isn’t the seller the Hyundai is, so it will retain a bit of exclu­siv­ity. The inte­rior is very mod­ern look­ing com­pared to my 7 year-old Miata, but looks dated com­pared to the Sonata. The sur­pris­ing thing was the dri­ving expe­ri­ence, the Sonata drove like a big fluffy Old Man With A Hat car, but the Optima felt like a driver’s car with nicely weighted and crisp steer­ing feel. While not exactly BMW-like, a 5 Series sized car at half the price makes this a win­ner in the cost/fun ratio. The han­dling and engine response wasn’t up to Gen­e­sis Coupe lev­els, but all and all I could see me own­ing this car.

The big down side to the Optima was once again size. In the Sonata Donna had to jack up the seat to the high­est level it could go, slide the seat way for­ward and then still do a lit­tle lean­ing for­ward to see where the hood ended. This car as expected, was the same way and to make mat­ters worse the Optima’s head rest was posi­tioned in a man­ner that poked her in the back of the head no mat­ter the height it was placed at.

When were were done test dri­ving the Optima we asked if we could try out their Elantra sized car, the Forte. The Forte comes in a coupe form which is a plus, but it’s exte­rior styling is in seri­ous need of updat­ing. Because of the dif­fer­ences in the Sonata and Optima, maybe the Forte would sur­prise us by being qui­eter than the Elantra, more com­fort­able and a more engag­ing drive. We never found out.

We asked if we could test drive the lit­tle black Koupe (their spelling, not mine) that we had parked the Optima next to. Our sales­man said, “I’ll go get the keys.” We waited the five min­utes required by the Secret Car Sales­man Man­ual. Then we waited about 3 or 4 more min­utes more before walk­ing back by the show­room to the Emperor and dri­ving off. Maybe he sensed we weren’t buy­ing today, so not worth the effort or he got stuck try­ing to find those keys, but either way he lost him­self and his com­pany any chance at our money.