Hyundai Coupe Review
Published: 14th February 2005
Hyundai Coupe
Comfort and Refinement
The Hyundai Coupe is relatively spacious with good front legroom but this is at the expense of rear seat passengers. As you would expect headroom is not that great and the standard electric sunroof takes away some of the much needed headroom.
The rear is only really suitable for children or adults on short journeys and the rear seats do not have head restraints. Interestingly, Hyundai warn you that you could crush the heads of rear occupants when closing the rear hatch, as the rear occupants heads come very close to the rear window.
Surprisingly the Coupe is a very easy vehicle to get in and out of aided by the wide opening doors and standard leather seats.
The controls are all ergonomically laid out but we found at night that some of the switchgear such as the sunroof, and interior light switches were not lit.
The Recaro/Keiper designed front seats are firm and supportive, and keep you in place as you explorer the cornering potential of the Coupe. The driver’s seat is manually controlled with height adjustment via a dial, recline and lumber support are operated by a lever. The leather bound steering wheel is height adjustable enabling you to find the optimum driving position.
At night the projector style headlights work well, and have an automatic on/off function, of course we would have liked to have seen Xenon headlights, but this would inevitably add to the cost. The interior rear view mirror automatically dips a night fall, which is an added bonus in a relatively low car.
The level of refinement is high and includes an illuminated cigarette lighter and ashtray, climate controlled air conditioning, cruise control, electric door mirrors, electric windows, heated door mirrors, heated rear window and speed sensitive front windscreen wipers.
How It Looks - Exterior
For 2005 the new-look Hyundai Coupe features a redesigned front profile including new headlamps, aggressive looking new front air intake, front bumper and fog lamps, new side ‘shark gills’, new rear light clusters, new door mirrors and 17 inch lightweight forged alloy wheels on the potent 2,656cc 2.7 V6. For more information [ click here ]
The Hyundai Coupe was styled in-house by the Hyundai Design Centre in Namyang - Korea. We like the styling but we feel that we must say that in our opinion the Hyundai Coupe does not look like any Ferrari we have ever seen, yes it is a Coupe and a striking one at that, but that is all it shares with the Ferrari 456.
