2001 Hyundai Accent LX review from North America

Two clutch failures in the first 47,000 miles.

My wife purchased the car new in 2000. It seemed like a pretty good little car. It ran well and was comfortable, even for me and I am over six feet tall. Then the clutch went out. The pressure plate broke in three places and destroyed the clutch disk. That was at 22,000 miles. We took it to the dealer and they charged 800.00 to replace it. They said it was her fault for riding the clutch and showed me the broken pieces and the burned patches on the metal. I pointed out that the metal looked porous and seemed to be a bad casting. They assured me it was just fine, it was my wife's driving. What choice did we have? We had it fixed. Then, a few days before Thanksgiving, it started slipping very badly. We took it in and sure enough, they wanted another 800.00 dollars. They told her she was riding the clutch. I am here to tell you that while her driving scares me, she does not ride the clutch or use it in any way that is not normal use. I am also here to say that in all my years of driving, and I have driven manual transmission cars for more than 35 years, I have only had one clutch failure and that was on a 1958 Chevy pickup that had 122,000 miles on its first clutch.

My conclusion is that Hyundai has built a substandard clutch mechanism and the customer can expect to pay and pay and pay until they unload the car on someone else.

This is the third and absolutely the last Hyundai we will ever buy. It may be a cheap car to buy, but not to own.