MT GARAGE
Verdict: 2019 Hyundai Kona “I began my year with the Hyundai Kona terrified of its lime green paint. Twelve months later, I miss it (almost) every day.”
SPECS Options Floormats ($125) Problem Areas None Maintenance Cost $198.51 (oil change, inspection, tire rotation, air filter, in-cabin filter) Normal-Wear Cost $0 3-Year Residual Value* $19,600 (65%) Recalls None
Jesse Bishop Base price $29,880 As tested $30,005
Service life: 12 mo/14,049 mi Avg Econ/CO2 25.5 mpg/0.76 lb/mi
*IntelliChoice data; assumes 42,000 miles at the end of three years
hen I first learned I would be handed the keys to our longterm Kona, one phrase struck me on Hyundai’s consumer site: “Big on adventure, smart on space.” It’s a kind of marketing slogan that fascinates me; it says so much but also so little. I wanted to get to the heart of that claim. With that in mind, I set a few goals for the year: We’d see how the Kona performed as a small SUV in a big city. We’d test its mettle on road trips and as a moving vehicle. We’d use every inch of its space, and we’d seek out adventures where we could. If there were truth to Hyundai’s claims, I was determined to find out. My first assessment of the Kona’s supposedly adventurous nature: instrumented and subjective performance testing. The Kona is no performance SUV, but in the context of what it is—a small, affordable SUV—it’s quite entertaining. Our test team called it “really fun” and noted that it’s a tossable, easily controllable crossover with good brake feel. In my time behind the wheel, I found no disagreement. The Kona was always a pleasure to drive; it didn’t exactly get my heart racing, but I was never bored, either,
and I consistently found the seven-speed dual-clutch’s manual mode an enjoyable change of pace. The Kona is filled with other small touches I enjoyed. With the Ultimate trim, our Kona featured heated leather seats, which I loved, and an eight-speaker Infinity audio system. At $30,005 as tested, our Kona wasn’t exactly a budget vehicle, but it wasn’t priced as a premium model, either. That’s still well below the average transaction price for a new vehicle, yet I never sat in the driver’s seat and wished for anything it didn’t have. It was always comfortable, and it always looked good to my eye. All the buttons, knobs, and switches felt solid, the touchscreen was responsive, and it was clear to me that Hyundai put thought into everything. For any SUV to claim “adventure” as its raison d’être, though, I’d argue it must be able to go where its sedan counterparts can’t. This is the one area where I felt the Kona let me down. Its relatively meager ground clearance is a hindrance if you want to get off a manicured path. At 7.0 inches, it falls right in between a Hyundai Elantra sedan and a Jeep
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80 MOTORTREND.COM NOVEMBER 2020
Renegade, my previous long-term ride. As such, when we took the Kona to Lake City, Colorado, a tiny town tucked in the remote San Juan Mountains, the Hyundai largely stayed parked at the campsite. It wasn’t even worth trying. I knew from the spec sheet alone that it could not make it where we planned to go. And with that, I deem the Kona not big on adventure. Your mileage may vary depending on the mountains you choose to climb. That said, the Kona did provide ample space for my wife and me to lug everything we needed and a lot we didn’t for 10 days in the wilderness. Officially, it has 45.8 cubic feet of cargo space with the rear seats down. Unofficially, I’m pretty sure I squeezed much more than that back there. I most recently made the trek to Colorado in our long-term Outback, which has about 75 cubic feet of total cargo space. We brought less stuff and still filled it close to capacity. I’m not saying you should overfill your SUV, but when doing so in the Kona, I still felt like I had adequate outward visibility, and if a backpack or extra pillow were to block my sightline, the built-in driver aids assured me I was still safe. The same was true when we moved to a new home. The Kona’s compact dimensions—which made it easy to park in the tight spots available in my new and old urban homes—limited how much we could fit, but it was a surprisingly capable moving vehicle, and even packed to the brim, I never felt compromised as the driver. I do have one other primary complaint: Although it features tons of useful tech that eased my mind with the Kona full, it did not include adaptive cruise control, and in fact the feature wasn’t even an option we could have added. Hyundai has rectified this on newer Konas, which do have available adaptive cruise, but on our 2019 model, this struck me as a significant
