Cantankerous Consumer:

Hyundai dethrones
Toyota and Honda!

By David Cobain

Friday, August 4, 2006

Give me a break! That’s what I’d have told you even a couple of months ago, if you’d suggested I buy a Hyundai — not to mention what I’d have said a few years ago.

But that, as they say, was then — and this is very much now. In the interim, Hyundai — the little Korean company that just grew and grew — has really come of age.

And with its expansion and coming of age, the cars the company makes and sells in markets all round the world have matured impressively in quality and status.

So it was with some surprise and greatly diminished scepticism that I found myself, a few weeks back, behind the wheel of an Accent two-door hatchback on a test drive.

The car caught my attention on the lot of Mountain Hyundai in Hamilton — a 2002 trade-in, dark grey, in apparently flawless condition, and with just 15,000 kms on the odometer.

I needed a car in a hurry: my 2002 Saturn, the second disappointing example of this marque I’d owned, had just been totalled in a collision for which I was not even slightly responsible.

To that point, it would not have occurred to me to consider a Hyundai. But I and my bank manager were wearying of repair bills and it seemed as good a time as any for change.

Salesman Ron Gadawski agreed with me — and not just because he makes his living selling Hyundai. Until very recently, he sold Toyotas and, before that, Hondas. "I know the business," he told me. "I know cars — and Hyundai is where the quality is."

He and Mountain Hyundai dealer Jaime Alexandre are hardly alone. J.D. Power, the influential U.S. auto rating company, has just backed their assessment, while stunning Toyota and Honda.

In its new car ratings, J.D. Power lists the top three in quality, with the lowest number of initial faults, as Porsche, Lexus and Hyundai — with Toyota trailing and Honda way back in the field.

I’m as impressed as they are. My sole concern was a sudden discolouration of the package tray — a casualty of this searing summer — but this was promptly replaced by Hyundai Auto Canada.

‘We are,’ the company reassured me, ‘dedicated to producing high quality vehicles and stand behind them with one of the finest warranties in Canada. We value all our Hyundai owners and strive to delight them with outstanding products and services....’

Well, they’ve succeeded — with me, anyway. I am delighted with my Hyundai. And I expect to be even more taken with those appealing 2007 models, when I get a chance to road test one. Watch this space.

Delight, though, does not relieve one of the need for rest, for sleep. But in this harried age, and with the fearsome temperatures we’ve endured for weeks, our few hours of nocturnal unconsciousness have been harder and harder to come by.

One tosses and turns, sweats prodigiously, throws off a bedsheet, thrashes about furiously, sweats even more profusely.... And so on, until — finally, cursingly— one gets up and makes a cup of tea to wash down an aspirin or to read for a while.

But there is, according to a U.S. computer consultant, another way. This is a CD of sound waves, which Jonathan Husni of Acendex claims mimic those of the human mind during sleep and, thus, produce the effects of sleep without unconsciousness.

Husni calls it PowerNap and offers it at US$10 a copy, with a money-back guarantee. In my experience, that’s just as well: listening to his CD seems no more effective in inducing profound rest than reclining to a recording of Niagara Falls.

A more certain route to relaxation at this time of year is a cold beer. And there is, of course, no paucity of such from which to choose. But finding one that really excels, particularly of the domestic variety, is tougher than it sounds.

There are the major Canadian brewers — Molson and Labatt; there is the multitude of smaller domestic breweries, whose products some believe grow steadily more like the big names; and there are hordes of chi-chi foreign brands.

But a Canadian brew of such quality and distinction as to shame the best of Europe’s exports, not to mention big-name domestics? You despair of finding such a liquid paragon? Well, don’t — because I’ve found just such a beer.

It’s Hockley Gold, a veritable nectar produced deep in the Ontario countryside by Hockey Valley Brewing Company. Made by hand, in small batches, it achieves what the company describes as ‘the perfect balance’.

I’m not sure what that means. But, as a scribbler who has guzzled local brews from Yorkshire to British Columbia, California to Zimbabwe, I can assure you that this Canadian beer beats any I’ve ever tasted, without exception.

It’s superb.