2001 Hyundai Tiburon 2.0 4 cylinder

Summary:

Champagne performance on a beer budget

Faults:

Some noticeable complaints would have to be the poor quality of paint. The paint is far to thin to stand up to todays environment, and bugs at highway speeds.

Front seat belts do not retract correctly.

Forward facing child safety seats cannot be secured in a safe manner. There is no linkage for a hold down of the seat, and the seat belts themselves are mounted too far forward of the seat byte. Hyundai has not yet addressed this issue.

Valve train of the engine is noisy.

The car also does not seem to stop as well as it should.

General Comments:

Over all I have been very pleased with this model car. It has responded well to sensible modifications. The looks of this car has received many compliments and wows. The stereo system is great. The original tires and suspension is a superb package for handling. I have never been uneasy about driving this car right to its limits (which far exceed many other cars).

Would you buy another car from this manufacturer? Don't Know

Review Date: 14th September, 2002

2001 Hyundai Tiburon 2.0

Summary:

Handling, looks, comfort, price, what more could a person ask for?

Faults:

Nothing has gone wrong yet except for one thing. My keyless entry has stopped working properly. The doors will no longer unlock the car, but they will still lock when arming the car. I haven't as of yet made an appointment with the dealer to fix this problem. But this should be easy to fix.

General Comments:

I am 34 and have owned many cars. From Corvettes to Porsche, and from Trans-Ams to Mustangs, but I can't get over how unique this little Tiburon is. I bought this car 3 months ago for my wife, she is from Moscow and this is her first car. I wanted to get her something cute but affordable.

Stumbling upon this Tiburon was pure luck. I was looking at cheap cars, like the Accent, Ford Focus, etc. But the salesman told me he would sell this cute little red Tiburon for 13,495. After looking at ugly Ford Focuses I couldn't resist the price and warranty, so I bought it.

My wife has driven the car only a little, most of the time I have been driving it, we have 3,100 miles on the car and I have probably driven 2000 miles of that.

I have tested the car a fair amount. It's best attribute certainly is in it's handling. This car handles better than any car I have ever driven except for the Porsche 944 Turbo. I can't get over how well this car handles, all for 13,495 dollars, unbelievable!

This car has the words sports car written all over it. I got the automatic for my wife; I have never driven the manual. I find the automatic to be just fine though for power, certainly you can't call this car slow, it's pretty fast, it's just not real fast. Bump the horses up to 200 though and you would have one incredible car. I would love to drive the stick and do a little performance driving, because even the auto is fun to drive.

The cars second best attribute is its brakes. At only 2600 pounds, this car stops on a dime, and leaves you nine cents change. I had thought that my Firebird Formula stops fast with ABS brakes, but this little Tiburon at only 2600 lbs with all wheel disc brakes stops faster.

The third best feature of this car is its ergonomics, including its comfort level. Everything in this car is just where it should be, it is perfect.

In my opinion, the Tiburon is one of the very best looking cars on the road, I can say absolutely nothing bad about this car, except perhaps that I only get about 21 miles per gallon out of it, my Formula got the same, but that was with a 5.7 liter engine producing 285 horsepower.

As far as reliability goes, I don't know, I only have 3,100 miles on the car, so time will tell. But so far, the car is awesome. Quality is everywhere, from the seats to the dash to the solid slam of the car doors. It's solid, rock solid.

I've heard the rattle in the dash, but only once or twice, I even heard the rattle in the back hatch, but only one time. The brakes make a very slight almost un-hearable noise, but as they are breaking in the noise is going away. But other than those very minor problems, this car is phenomenal, I really love it.

Would you buy another car from this manufacturer? Yes

Review Date: 7th January, 2002

29th Aug 2002, 15:13

Hey heres a quick tip from a tibby owner in the states, dump the air box and get a cone filter. get some new plugs and get a new muffler. This combination will drastically move the power from the stock 8.5 seconds (manual) to a quick 7.1 to 6.9 plus your fuel economy will scream to 34-38 mpg I don't know the conversion to kilometers, but I get 367 miles to a tank. love the tibby, hate the tibby, either way its still a relationship with the tibby.