2020 Sonata – great look, incredible mpg
GILBERT’S GARAGE JOHN GILBERT
In a parking lot, the Sonata is low and slinky when surrounded by gigantic pickups and SUVs. Photos by John Gilbert After spending a week thoroughly enjoying a 2020 Hyundai Sonata Limited sedan in both city and highway driving, I asked my wife and co-driver Joan where she thought the Sonata ranked among all the cars we’ve driven in the past year. She said she would rank it among the best, just because it looked so sleek and stylish, and because it was extremely comfortable on a trip from Duluth to Brainerd International Raceway to watch a Trans-Am road race and back to Duluth on a warm summer Sunday. “How about the performance?” I asked. And she said, “Oh yeah, that too.” Among the little tricks I’ve developed to analyze fairly all the cars I’ve
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road-tested for reviews, one is to zero the trip-odometer before taking a substantial highway trip, just to give the vehicle a chance to get optimal fuel economy. Usually that brings the mpg up significantly. But in 50 years of testdriving every imaginable car, truck and SUV on the market, I have never before done what I did with the Sonata. I zeroed the odometer because I thought the computer had given me an erratically high fuel economy reading. Combined with three days of scaling the cliffs of Duluth and then driving to Brainerd in central Minnesota, the instruments showed we had gotten 36 miles per gallon. The Sonata Limited we were driving
was powered by the modest little 1.6-liter turbocharged 4-cylinder, and while I love that engine, the Sonata is a large sedan – the size of such midsize stalwarts as the Accord, Camry, Altima, Passat and Mazda6 – and there was no way that little engine could move us so quickly and deliver that sort of nearhybrid fuel economy. On the way home, Joan took the wheel and I settled into the comfortable passenger seat and watched as the computer’s fuel rating climbed, and climbed and climbed. As we came down the big hill into West Duluth on the Interstate, it hit a high of 47.1 miles per gallon. When I reminded Joan that the restyled Sonata has an advanced look and excellent driving manners, that 47.1 mpg was
incredible. “Oh yeah,” she said. “That too.” After carrying the South Kor-ea manufacturers hopes as a breakthrough contemporary sedan for the 2011 model year, Sonata’s success in engineering and technology boosted Hyundai to an elite level that it quickly spread to all its other models. This newest generation may prove Hyundai’s corporate theory that once the world’s vehicle buyers satisfy their astounding urge to buy SUVs of every size and description, there will be a return to purchasing sedans, either as an alternative to the SUV already in the driveway or as an everyday conveyance that is both enjoyable and a style statement. The 2020 Sonata gets straight-A August 6, 2020 45
