Elantra’s third flavour’s tasty like the others
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2013 Hyundai Elantra GT
Drive: front-wheel-drive
Width: 1,780 mm
Wheelbase: 2,650 mm
Weight: 1,324 kg
You can now get an Elantra in three flavours — sedan, coupe and GT.
Actually, you might have trouble getting a sedan, the 2012 Canad- ian Car Of The Year, as the company has recently added a third shift to its Alabama plant to try and keep up with demand.
The 2013 Elantra coupe and GT are the most recent additions to the lineup and extend the Hyundai’s incredible ability to attract new customers.
This week we’ll tell you about the strangely-named GT. I question the wisdom of calling a five-door hatchback with nothing special under the hood or connected to the wheels a GT, especially when it replaces a wagon, the Elantra Touring, in the lineup.
But greater minds than mine are obviously at work here, so I’ll try to get over it.
One thing that is perfectly clear is that the 2013 Elantra GT is a stylish addition to the automotive landscape.
This extremely good-looking car hides a wealth of room and standard features beneath the latest example of Hyundai’s ‘Fluidic Sculpture’ design theme introduced in 2009.
The sleek newcomer boasts an impressive 0.30 co-efficient of drag. That number may not mean much to most consumers, but to engineers and designers, it means the car slips through the air with minimal drag, or friction.
That in turn means it slips through with minimal disturbance i.e. wind noise and requires less power to push through the air. Less power means less fuel.
The Elantra GT is rated by Transport Canada at an incredible 4.9 litres/100 km highway. That’s hybrid territory without the cost and complexity.
As usual, I was unable to come close to those laboratory ratings but the test vehicle did average 6.1 on my 350-km, mostly-highway test route, and right up there with the best I’ve seen from the hybrids.
The other side of this equation is that nothing is free. The Elantra GT is distinctly unlike a GT in the performance department.
Hyundai’s Nu 1.8 four-cylinder engine, also used in the Elantra sedan and Coupe is a thoroughly modern and obviously efficient unit.
But with 148 horsepower and 131 lb. ft. of torque it is no pavement burner.
The test car had a six-speed manual transmission and since there is no grunt below 3,000 rpm — maximum torque occurs at 4,700 rpm — I was continually rowing the box to get the revs up to the power-producing range in order to get some performance.
Read more at : http://thechronicleherald.ca/wheelsnews/146177-elantra-s-third-flavour-s-tasty-like-the-others
