Sonata Stories

Hit The Hyundai

Relax, nothing happened to the Purple Whale.

We went to an Augusta Greenjackets game last night. The draw was twofold, fireworks after the game and admission plus a hot dog/hamburger buffet for $20.

As is normal at minor league ballparks there are a rash of promotional stunts between innings and one of them at Lake Olmstead Stadium? is called Hit the Hyundai. A fans name is drawn at random and he is brought out to the field just on the outfield grass beyond first base. He is given a bat and has three chances to knock a baseball off a plastic tee and hit the Hyundai Sonata as it drives slowly along the warning track from right center field to the foul line.

The first ball last night’s contestant hit lands about half way to the warning track and about fifty feet ahead of the car. His second hit travels the same distance towards the car, but more online with it. He really connects with ball number three and for a second it looks like it has a chance, but it lands smack in the center of the warning track about 2 feet behind the car. The PA announcer says, “Wow! That is the closest we’ve had all year!”* Had he hit the Sonata he would not have won the car (dent and all), but merely $50.

*He probably says that at every game.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Tran?si?tions since 10/24/08: 1063

Off Roading

We ran a couple errands after work today, the last of which was to pick up our evening meal, a buy one get one free spaghetti dinner. Trouble came when we left the restaurant parking lot, home was to the left and making a left on this road at this time of day is nearly impossible, so I made a right. Then I hung a quick left on a road I have passed by a zillion times, but had never driven. When I got to the next stop sign I realized where I was. Back to the right was a road I had already traveled on the way to the restaurant and away from home. To the left and towards home was a dead end with a little dirt spur that dumped out behind Walmart.

I went left. The little dirt spur was in a lot worse shape than I remembered. The pot holes were separated by not much of level and because of the recent afternoon thunderstorms, filled with dirty brown water. Slow and careful driving allowed me to keep most of the wheels out of the divots. Then to top it off, the final obstacle was a curb to drive down off of to get back to pavement. Thank goodness we weren’t in the Miata.

The Purple Whale got a deserved bath after the spaghetti dinner.

I’m Going To Miss It When It Is Gone

But not enough to actually pay for it.

I got my second letter in the mail from SiriusXM today. My 3 month trial subscription expires on July 26th. This offer is for a special $4.99 a month for 6 months. Of course there is an asterisk attached to the price and the fine print on the bottom says: Other fees and taxes will apply. The yearly rate is 7.92 a month before those fees and taxes. I’ve read on the Sonata Forum that if you call (or answer their phone calls, which I’m not doing) they will offer a yearly $77 price ($6.42 a month before those pesky fees and taxes.)

Sometimes it seems worth a few bucks a month and then other times not so much. Just going to go back to recording songs off the net and dumping them on a USB stick.

Also on a musical note (get it? musical, note?) I signed up for a subscription to Spotify, that cloud music service that all the kids are on about these days, and got my email invite yesterday. I haven’t activated it yet. From what I’ve read, it is, unlike Pandora, hard to discover new music, unless you do the social media thing. So I guess I’ll give it a try, but I think it will be less missed than XM when I give up on Spotify after a few days.

Eco Mode?

The Sonata has an ECO button on the dash and when it is pressed in does something magic, I think (because it isn’t covered in the owners manual that I downloaded from Hyundai), to the throttle response and shift points to increase the car’s fuel mileage. To let you now that the system is armed and working there is a green ECO displayed in the middle of the dash. I find the light annoying so I keep the ECO switch off.

We filled up with gas tonight for the first time since we tested the lower limits of the gas tank and we had been 477.6 miles of mostly just to and from work commuting. The Purple Whale drank 15.26 gallon of regular fuel, so we averaged 31.3 MPG for this tank.

I wonder what would happen if I left that switch on?

3 Things

Today at the Valve Store(tm) while heating up my lunch a co-worker asked, “Its been a couple months, have you been surprised by any negatives on the Sonata?” “Things that don’t show up during a short test drive.” Neither Donna nor I could come up with anything. The car is as comfortable after 6 hours and a couple hundred mile trip as it was after the 6 minute, couple mile initial exposure.

It got me thinking, if I could change any of the things I didn’t like about the Sonata, what would they be. I could come up with only three.

1) Chrome Door Handles. The base Sonata GLS has body colored handles, while our SE has chrome. I understand why they are there, most people equate chrome with luxury, but to me the chrome makes them stand out in a bad way. They look mis-aligned because they follow along the curved character line that runs from the wrap around tail lamp to the middle of the front wheel well. So not only are they not parallel to the road, they are not parallel to themselves.

2) Chrome Oval Tail Pipes. They are the right size and shape for the back end of this car and the look still stands up even when you look at them closely and notice that in fact the 3″ x 5″ oval is just an enhancement for the 2-1/4″ round exhaust pipe. Where it does fall apart is in the side view. The length of the enhancement stops slightly short, so that from certain angles it is quite obvious that it is just tacked on.

3) Steering Feel. While the SE feel is much improved over the GLS, it still leaves a bit to be desired when compared to the weight and feedback of the Mazda 6 or the Ki Optima.

Imported From Montgomery

Now that we have a “mid-sized” car, every time we see a car that looks to her to be similar to the Purple Whale Donna will ask, “Is that car bigger (smaller) than we are?” A couple of times in the last few weeks we have come across a Lexus ES350 and when she asks about tone my response has always been that it is a bit larger that the Sonata. Today I checked, and you know what, it is slightly smaller in everything but 2″ longer in length. The big difference between the two automobiles is towards the bottom of the following chart, horsepower, torque and price. All that extra HP is needed to move the 300 extra pounds in weight. I have ridden in a ES350 and the extra weight is in the bigger engine, a smoother suspension and sound deadening. Is it worth 50% more than the Hyundai? Maybe to some.

Sonata SE Lexus ES350
Dims Dims Diff
Wheel Base 110 109.3 -0.7
Length 189.8 191.7 1.9
Width 72.2 71.7 -0.5
Height 57.9 56.3 -1.6
Interior Volume 103.8 95.4 -8.4
Front Leg Room 45.5 42.2 -3.3
Head Room 40 37.4 -2.6
Shoulder Room 57.9 57.3 -0.6
Hip Room 55.2 55.9 0.7
Turning Radius 35.8 36.7 0.9
Weight 3316 3605 289
Horsepower 200 @ 6300 268 @ 6200 68
Torque 186 @ 4250 248 @ 4700 62
Power/Weight 16.6 13.5 3.1
Gas Mileage 22/35 19/27 -3/-8
MSRP $24,027 $36,025 $11,998
Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Tran­si­tions since 10/24/08: 1042

Oops I Did It Again

In my quest to prevent door dings by parking way out or way to one side of the parking lot has its downside, like the sacrificial anodes used to protect deep sea oil rigs from corroding away, the poor wheels of the Sonata forfeit their beauty. I curbed a wheel parking yesterday. Not just any old wheel either, but the same one I scraped the day after we bought the car. Was I lucky enough to hit the wheel in the same spot? No, of course not, I blemished a different 3 to 4 inches of the edge.

I guess the only thing left to do now to even things out is to keep hitting that same wheel until I have scraped the entire circumference of the rim.

If when you read the title of this post, the first thing you thought of was Britney Spears, shame on you, Louie Armstrong did it first way back in 1932 – Oops I Did It Again!.