Surprise Package!. Review on Hyundai Accent CRDi

NOTE: THIS ARTICLE WAS FIRST WRITTEN BY ME FOR BUSINESS STANDARD MOTORING, WHERE I WORKED FOR TWO YEARS, AS ROAD TEST EDITOR

A four-door diesel-powered family sedan - and a Korean one at that - wouldn't rate too high on most car enthusiasts' priority lists. Such a car would be dull to look at, boring to drive, and quake and rattle more than a bunch of teenagers on an all night rave, right? Well, in the case of the new Accent CRDi, wrong. This car, with a 1500cc common rail direct injection (a contemporary diesel technology...) diesel engine that makes about 80 horsepower, is one big surprise! Given that the petrol Accent is none too exciting to drive, I wasn't even expecting much of this diesel, but this car proved most of my notions wrong.

The 3-cylinder engine is surprisingly peppy, and with some judicious use of the car's slick 5-speed gearbox, it's very much possible to keep with most petrol-powered cars that belong in this category. Sure, this is no hot-rod in the Honda City VTEC mould, but hey, you get good zippy performance, PLUS fuel economy, which is more than what other cars can say for themselves. Acceleration is much better than either the Esteem diesel (which uses the same engine which was used in the older Accent DLS) or the Lancer GLXd, and the top speed, which is about 160 km/hr, is also higher.

This car would have been a near-ideal compromise between diesel economy and petrol-like performance had it not been for its one major problem - the car judders and vibrates simply too much. When sitting inside, you can feel everything from the steering wheel to the gearshit knob to the control pedals shake and quake in symphony with the engine. Noise and harshness are not excessive, but vibration most certainly is, and this, to me, is not really acceptable in a modern diesel sedan. For example, even though the Esteem Di and the new Indigo DLX do not have the CRDi's common rail technology, they still don't vibrate as much.

Also, the car's suspension is setup way too soft for enthusiastic driving, and during even moderately hard cornering, the cars rolls and wallows all over the place, which can be a bit unsettling. And there's more - the power-assisted steering is not communicative enough. Sure, it provides for effortless parking, but at higher speeds, it lacks feel, and is quite vague. All of this means you can't hustle the car along really quickly without fear of putting it in the nearest ditch...

Still, Hyundai have a potential winner on their hands - if only they sort the vibration issue, and look at offering a more taut/firm suspension setup, which'll clean up the handling. But regardless of whether or not that happens, this car sure will change the image of C-segment diesel cars in this country..... :-)