Filed under: Performance, Hatchback, Hyundai, Long-Term Garage
There are an awful lot of good reasons to get into the Hyundai Veloster family and formula. This car looks good, is loaded out with tech and offers a great deal of practicality in a small form factor. One good reason not to consider a Veloster, at least if you’re a city dweller or have primarily urban daily driving path, is the turbocharged 1.6-liter engine in the eponymous Veloster Turbo.
Two major factors kill the Veloster Turbo in terms of said city driving: turbo lag and fuel economy.
Two major factors kill the Veloster Turbo in terms of city driving: turbo lag and fuel economy.
I had our long-term Turbo for all of June and the first week of July, during which time I primarily used the car as a runabout in Ann Arbor, MI. With the exception of a few 40-ish-mile jaunts into Metro Detroit, I drove the Hyundai roughly five to ten miles at a time, with speeds that I’m sure averaged 30 miles per hour or less. This kind of driving isn’t a good recipe for high mile-per-gallon numbers, to be sure, and I netted out at about 21.6 mpg – a decent bit lower than the EPA estimate of 24 mpg in the city.
Meanwhile, I wasn’t having a riveting time whilst burning that gas (at least you don’t have to run premium). If you’ve been following the saga of this long-term car to date, you’ve read a lot about how the Turbo doesn’t feel especially hot-hatchy. There are plenty of reasons for this, but I think much of it comes down to a laggy turbo. Getting into the heart of the boost takes a really heavy foot and a low gear when initially accelerating. Worse, the rush from the turbo boost doesn’t feel especially strong once it does come on. (I don’t actually mind a bit of turbo lag, if the payout at the end is a crazy accelerative moment; see Mazdaspeed3, Mini Cooper S, etc.)
In other words: If the Veloster Turbo felt really fast, even sometimes, I’d forgive the fuel economy. As it stands, I’m quite sure the trade-off versus the standard, slow, nice handling non-turbo Veloster, at least for city drivers, is a bad one to make. That’s not even taking sticker price into account…
Continue reading 2013 Hyundai Veloster Turbo: June 2013
2013 Hyundai Veloster Turbo: June 2013 originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 12 Jul 2013 14:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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