An affordable sports coupe for grownups

The automobile market is currently awash in car’s that look nice on the outside but look and feel cheap on the inside. Nissan products leap especially to mind, but many domestic brands also do poorly here. More and more, it seems you must spend over $30,000 to get a car with a rich-feeling interior.

Sporty coupes commit additional sins. Quite often they’re adorned with all sorts of bizarre styling details. While these might appeal to teens (or people who want to think they’re still in their teens) most adults would feel ashamed to own one based on looks alone.

To my great surprise, I can happily report that the 2003 Hyundai Tiburon avoids both of these pitfalls.

Hyundai Tiburon Reliability

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Styling

The Tiburon has been redesigned for 2003, and the new styling avoids the showy curves of the old car. Instead, it has a more sophisticated look largely stolen from Ferrari’s $220,000 twelve-cylinder two-seater, the 575 Maranello. No one will mistake the Tiburon for a Ferrari—the proportions remain those of an affordable 2+2, even if the theme did translate surprisingly well—but it still manages to look both sophisticated and sporty. The gills behind the front wheels and rivets in the gas cap surround are the sort of elements that often plague sporty coupes, but they manage to escape looking tacky here. Frankly, the Tiburon manages to look more adult than the expensive Ferrari, while still looking quite sporty.

To get the six-speed manual in place of the standard five-speed it is necessary to order one of three “UltraSports” packages, each of which also includes a “high spoiler.” Usually I don’t care for a large spoiler, but as with the rest of the exterior this element is tastefully done and actually manages to enhance the overall look of the car. The rear end of the Tiburon looks a touch droopy without the tall spoiler to hold the eye up.

All in all, a much better looking car than an Eclipse or Celica, especially if you’re not after that boy-racer look.

Inside it just gets better. More than anything else, the interior of this car shocked me. Every piece looks and feels classy. This might be partly due to the dark color, but as black is the only available interior color then the cheaper look the sometimes attends light-colored plastic won’t be an issue here. On the other hand, if you hate black interiors then you’re SOL.

Like the exterior, the overall theme manages to look sporty without the use of any tacky elements. I especially liked the ribbed rubber on the shift know and climate controls (the latter have a light, smooth feel to them, like those in much more expensive cars). I also liked the diamond-textured vinyl on the steering wheel hub and door pulls. I’ve seen this in a few cars lately, such as the Cadillac CTS, and it works just as well here. Finally, a few touches of metallic trim contrast nicely with the otherwise dark interior. These are also trendy right now, but in the Tiburon unlike some applications the designers didn’t go overboard and use square feet of the stuff.

Aluminum pedals are part of all the V6 option packages. A nice touch that further reinforces the sporty yet tasteful character of the interior.

Accommodations

The front seats are fantastic. Not only are they comfortable, but they’re perfectly shaped for aggressive driving. Not only do they have good lower side bolstering, but they have wings to cup the driver’s shoulders. I find the latter in only a few seats, but LOVE them when I do. Owing to the principle of leverage, these make a lot more sense than going crazy with the lower side bolsters. The driver’s seat has manual height and lumbar support adjusters. I set both in their lowest setting. Unlike the cheaper Elantra, the Tiburon has only one knob for height adjustment, and it tilts the seat forward a bit as it raises it. Tilt cannot be adjusted independently of height. I preferred the slight rearward tilt in the seat’s lowest position.

Also, the seat was plenty high in its lowest position, and even for 5ֽ” me headroom was at a premium. People with taller trunks will be doing some serious reclining. Aside from the headroom shortage, the driving position is very good. Based on the exterior styling, with its obviously un-tall side windows, I was concerned that I’d feel like I was sitting in a hole. I did not. To the side the window sill might have been a touch high for my taste, but forward the dash was low enough that visibility seemed adequate. I did not feel closed in, even with the dark interior.

The V6 Tiburon has a standard 360-watt Infinity cassette/CD system with six speakers plus a subwoofer. Sounded nice to my admittedly untrained ears.

Aside from a large storage compartment on the right side, things are not happy in the rear seat. It’s the most cramped rear seat I’ve sat in in some time. There was not enough room for my head or legs. I’d estimate that anyone over five feet in height will have to scrunch to an uncomfortable extent.

Cargo room is good for this sort of car. The hatch opening is large. The rear seats fold in two sections.

On the Road

Driving the Tiburon brought more pleasant surprises. No, it’s not blindingly fast. The 2.7 liter 24-valve V6 produces 181 horsepower at 6000 RPM, but they have to pull a bit over a ton and a half, so the Tiburon isn’t likely to win drag races against the lighter, more powerful Acura RSX. Where it will beat them is refinement. It doesn’t matter how refined a four is, it isn’t going to feel or sound as sweet as even a mediocre six, at least not as far as I’m concerned. As for the V6 in the Tiburon, in smoothness and sound it ranks above average even among V6s. It’s clearly superior in these areas to any six to be found in a domestic brand car, and in my drive felt about equal to the best from Nissan and Honda. With the torque peaking at a decent 177 ft-lbs. at a relatively low 4000 RPM, you can easily keep up with traffic and merge onto the highway without doing anything crazy. In the four-cylinder competition, with their 6000+ RPM torque peaks, these operations likely require sending the engine into the loud portion of the rev range.

Frankly, I’m perfectly fine with the rate of acceleration. It’s fast enough to never feel slow, yet not so powerful that to have any fun you have to regularly risk run-ins with the law. With the modicum of power the V6 provides, you have to work the gears a little, but not too much. The perfect amount of power as far as I’m concerned.

The six-speed transmission helps. With six closely spaced ratios, you’ll never find that one gear is too low while the next is too high. There’s plenty of grunt in the lower gears, while sixth brings the RPM down to a decent level for cruising (a bit over 2500 at 60). In many competitors on the highway the engine is spinning like crazy, which can become tiring after a while.

Best of all, the shifter in the six-speed feels great. (I can’t speak for the standard five-speed, it might be just as good.) I’ve already mentioned the rubber-ringed knob. Going from gear to gear, the shifter is firm yet smooth. Unlike most people, I don’t like shifters that are very light in effort, yet I also don’t want to feel like I’m forcing the shifter from gear to gear. Here the shifter had a decidedly mechanical, firm feel to it, yet also felt smooth and refined. Throws were reasonably short, though a bit shorter still wouldn’t be bad. Compared to the Nissan, Dodge, and VW shifters I’ve sampled recently, the one in this Hyundai was awesome. Only that in the Focus SVT comes close, and even that one is slightly inferior.

Of course, if you like your shifter low in effort, you won’t be happy with this one.

The steering similarly suited my taste. The salesman claimed that the system included variable assist, but the level of assist didn’t feel variable to me. Which is just fine as far as I’m concerned. Variable assist systems rarely get it right. They tend to be too light until you’re up to highway speeds. While the steering in the Tiburon felt a touch heavy at parking lot speeds, I’d gladly pay this price for a firm feel once underway. While the steering wasn’t as communicative as I’d like (okay, it was a bit dead), it was linear and accurate. Overall I felt the steering suited the mature character of the car.

One thing holding the Tiburon back from being an all-out sports car is that the engine is driving the front wheels, not the rear ones. In anything up to moderately aggressive driving this isn’t much of a problem. There is a touch of torque steer from time to time, but not so much as to upset the stability of the car. (I drove the Nissan Sentra SE-R the same day—now that’s some crazy torque steer.) Generally the chassis seems very balanced for a front-wheel-drive car. I never felt like the rear was going to come around on me, or as if the front was plowing towards the curb. Take the Tiburon up to 10/10ths, however, and the limits of the chassis become apparent. Most notably, the car leans a bit more than some competitors, causing the inside front wheel to lose traction fairly easily in hard turns. If you like to drive a car really, really hard, then look elsewhere. If you want something you can push fairly hard from time to time, and want to feel solid and balanced through turns in normal driving, then we’re still on track here.

At least with the 17” 45-series tires that come with the V6/manual powertrains, the Tiburon’s ride is choppy over expansion joints, divots, and the like, both at moderate speeds and on the highway. Every road imperfection drew a loud clomp from the tires, and this clomp was soundly felt and heard. This is typical of this sort of car. Because the car retained its solid, composed feel over the chop I didn’t mind this firm ride much. The ride wasn’t always smooth, but the car never felt unrefined or cheap. Road noise is moderately loud at highway speeds. Even though a stiff, fairly loud ride is typical of sports coupes, since this car looks and feels more mature than most, and lacks the sharp handling of some competitors, then Hyundai should probably rethink their suspension calibration and tire choice. They should just admit this is a sports coupe for those who want to drive at 7/10ths, and tune every piece to suit.

The tires with the 17” wheels are not all-season. For months when snow is likely you’re going to want a set of snow tires.

Warranty

By now just about everyone knows that Hyundai’s standard warranty is 5/60 on the whole car and 10/100 on the powertrain. Does quite a bit to dispel reliability concerns with Korean products.

Pricing

For quick, up-to-date pricing, and especially user-specified price comparisons, check out the website I created: www.truedelta.com. Why yet another vehicle pricing website? Well, I personally lacked the patience to keep using the others. They were too slow and required too much effort, especially when trying to compare prices. So I taught myself some programming and created a site where there is no need to dig through option packages, prerequisites, and the like one by one -- the TrueDelta algorithm figures these out for you in one swift pass.

The following is from the time the review was first written:

A base Tiburon V6 runs $18,500. This price includes leather, although one no-cost package trades this leather for the aluminum pedals and spoiler. Based on the option package prices, leather appears to cost $600, a reasonable amount if you like the stuff. If you want the six-speed transmission (adds $250 over the five-speed, so I recommend it) with a sunroof, you’re getting leather. Since the six-speed, sunroof, ABS, pedals, and spoiler add only $2,000 to the price—bringing the price to $20,500—the fully loaded car seems the best way to go. Edmunds suggests that dealers typically knock a grand off the car, but my salesman offered to sell the car for $19,300, and I wasn’t even trying to bargain. This is an amazing car for well under twenty grand. If you want to save two grand and get the base V6, it’s an equally great value.

A 2003 Celica GT-S with the same level of equipment as the loaded Tiburon runs $25,290, and Edmunds suggests dealers don’t discount them. While I doubt this latter bit, the Celica would have to be discounted A LOT to bring it in line with the Hyundai’s price. Not happening, and even at the same price I suspect all but the most aggressive drivers would prefer the Hyundai. If the difference is six grand, well…

A 2003 Mitsubishi Eclipse GTS stickers for $24,752, and dealers take off about a grand. Even if the Mitsubishi wasn’t terribly tacky, I would still prefer the Hyundai. Since it is so ugly, I’d prefer the Hyundai even if it were the more expensive car.

A 2002 Acura RSX Type-S runs $23,670, and dealers discount about a grand. The magazines tend to rate this car #1 in every comparison test, so it might be worth the extra cash. I hope to take one for a test drive soon to find out how good it is for myself. (Update: Done. Click the hyperlink to go to the review.) No matter how good it is, the Hyundai does look better and has two more cylinders.

Of the car’s I’ve driven in the Tiburon’s price range, the only one that I’d consider instead is the $18,500 or so Ford Focus SVT. The Focus has sharper handling, and contains an adult-sized rear seat, but lacks the Tiburon’s sports car styling, has two fewer cylinders, and is less luxurious. While each does its own thing very well they’re such different cars that the best car between them depends on your priorities.

Beyond the low price, the Hyundai V6 does not appear to require premium gas. Most competitors do. Always a big plus in my book. The 18/26 EPA ratings suggest that the Tiburon’s V6 drinks about 30% more gas than the lighter four-cylinder competition, but cheap gas makes up for much of the shortfall. (In a Car and Driver comparison test the Tiburon V6 got 20 MPG, while the Eclipse V6 got 22 and the Acura and Toyota (both fours) got 24, so the gap might not be quite as wide as the EPA ratings suggest.)

Last Words

The Tiburon surprised me in many areas, generally looking and feeling far more expensive than its $20,000 price. Perhaps because I’m over thirty, I appreciated the tasteful styling and interior. The handling falls apart a bit at the limits, and the ride is a bit rough, but its strengths more than outweigh its weaknesses. Especially for people who do not drive very aggressively. As a package, I feel this car is very well suited to sports coupe shoppers well out of their teens. Throw the price in, and it’s a downright steal.

Though the Tiburon has its faults, the car suits most people's driving style so well and the price is so low that I've given it five stars.

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