Latest news with #HyundaiExcel
News.com.au
22-04-2025
- Automotive
- News.com.au
Rare phenomenon that's striking Australians once again
Is your car still where you left it? For the last decade or so we have been able to be pretty confident about that. Car theft got rare. But just recently, the trend has turned. The courts of Australia are more and more full of car thieves, as stealing cars becomes a phenomenon once again. The next chart shows what I mean: the number of people in court for motor vehicle theft is at its highest level since the statistics began in 2010-11. Joy-riders We need to put that recent rise in context though. The bad old days were even worse. I'll never forget the time my housemate got his car stolen. I woke up to the sound of him banging on my bedroom door. 'Did you move my car?'. I hadn't. A short while later he got out of denial and accepted it was stolen. He rang the cops and rode his bike to work. That afternoon they found the car burned out in a field. This was in about 2005, and at the time his car was super old. 1980s cars were easy to hot-wire if you knew how. But not all thieves did know how. Around 2006 I woke up to find my own first car had been broken into; someone had ripped the dashboard off and pulled out all the wires. They hadn't managed to get it going and an auto-electrician repaired it for me (the central locking never worked again, but then not many people expected a 1989 Hyundai Excel to have central locking anyway). Back around 2000 cars were going missing all the time, then car theft plunged, caused by new technology, including engine immobilisers and the end of hot-wiring. But as of 2023, the latest year for which we have data, it was showing signs of rising. I suspect the 2024 data will show even more thefts. When cars go missing these days, it's usually because the thief took the keys. They break into your house, grab the key off the kitchen bench. Usually next to the fruit bowl and the tissue box? They drive off like they own it. About half the time, cars are stolen from homes, not streets. People are looking for solutions. And a simplest one is this. The old club lock on the steering wheel. It's the one thing Aussies feel we need, because it is going to stop the thief, even ones who have the car keys in their hand. The price of cars in China There's also an economic explanation for car theft. In the era where cars were getting stolen less, they also got cheaper in relative terms. Makes sense, right? People want to steal things that are expensive. Most kids grew up in a house with a car these days. They didn't always need to steal one to have access to one. Same way flat screen TVs don't get stolen so much any more. Flat screen TVs are falling in price and got way bigger. And the same idea applies to cars – while they have not halved in price like TVs, they have certainly risen less than inflation and improved a lot. The following chart shows the official inflation figures for cars. It reveals your money goes further these days when buying a car. Although that's quality-adjusted for the fact cars are now safer, faster, use less fuel and come with longer warranties, so it doesn't map directly onto the drive-away price. Still the point is valid: when cars were getting better and better value they got stolen less, now the reverse is true and they are getting stolen more. Steering wheel locks used to be everywhere. Sometimes old ideas come into fashion again, and maybe this generation of kids will grow up like I did, seeing steering wheel locks everywhere. Just don't leave the key for it in the same place as your car key!
Yahoo
24-02-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Hyundai has experienced a significant transformation over the past 50 years
The Hyundai Motor Company was established in 1967, with its first official offering in the United States being the simple and inexpensive 1986 Hyundai Excel. Despite entering our country in the late 1980s, Hyundai had been building cars in Korea for nearly two decades by then. The thing was that they were partnered with other automakers at the time, like Ford. Over the years, Hyundai has moved on from reliance on others to a global juggernaut in the industry. With that in mind, I wanted to see where Hyundai currently stood in our reality compared to where they came from. The easiest way for me to do this was to test the least and most expensive vehicles available on these shores. Thus, in one week, I drove the 2025 Genesis 3.5T E-Supercharger AWD G90, which has an MSRP of $102,000, and the Hyundai Venue with a starting MSRP of $20,100. Driving them back to back was a cathartic method of exploring an automaker's Hyundai Venue is labeled as an SUV or a crossover, but it's actually a tall hatchback. Its buzzy 1.6-liter engine sends 121 horsepower to the front wheels through a continuously variable transmission (CVT). Despite weighing in at about 2,600 lbs, the combination of engine and transmission makes the Venue lumber when merging. It is one of the slowest cars I've tested in a long time. The benefit of that powertrain is excellent mileage. The Hyundai venue gets an EPA-estimated 29 mpg city, 33 mpg highway, and 31 mpg combined. It's also surprisingly utilitarian for a little guy, with 18.7 cubic feet of space behind the rear seats and 31.9 feet with the rear seats folded. Four average-sized adults fit fairly comfortably, but larger folks might find it confining. Finally, there's the big benefit of outstanding maneuverability, and this is one of the easiest cars to park. Hyundai gives the Venue a lot of bang for the buck with standard forward collision-avoidance assistance with pedestrian detection, lane keep assist, and an 8-inch touch screen. Apple Carplay and Android Auto come standard, many ways, the Hyundai Venue reminds me of that original Hyundai Excel. It's slow and primitive, yet efficient and an outstanding value. Much like Lexus is the luxury branch of Toyota, Genesis is the luxury branch of Hyundai. Genesis went from a name that no one took seriously to a contender among the very best that Japan and Europe have to offer. Take the 2025 Genesis G90 3.5T E-Supercharger AWD G90, for example. Competing directly against vehicles like the Mercedes-Benz S-Class, the Genesis G90 3.5T E-Supercharger is both turbocharged AND supercharged. Its engine makes 409 horsepower and is bolted to a smooth 8-speed automatic transmission. As powerful as it is, the ride is outstanding, and it can handle when called it isn't perfect, considering some technological issues like the lack of Apple CarPlay, it more than makes up for its shortcomings with an interior that wouldn't feel out of place in a Bentley. The attention to detail is excellent, and the overall driving dynamics are competitive in this class. The G90 does all of this while undercutting vehicles like the S-Class by nearly $20,000, or by nearly one Hyundai Venue. In less than 50 years, Hyundai went from making bargain-basement compact cars in the United States to world-class luxury vehicles. That's not too shabby. The Korean automaker also makes some of the most competitive gas and electric vehicles on the road, and there are no signs of slowing down. We say bravo, Hyundai, and here's to even more decades spearheaded by your newest, unique design language. Love reading Autoblog? Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get exclusive articles, insider insights, and the latest updates delivered right to your inbox. Click here to sign up now!
USA Today
16-02-2025
- Automotive
- USA Today
Saturday Night Live's best car sketches, parodies and fake ads
MotorTrend Staff MotorTrend Saturday Night Live, the comedy sketch show that's on its 50th season, might be more famous for its political parodies, but it has a long, strong history of some hilarious car-related skits and fake ads. With classics popping up throughout the years (SNL's inaugural episode was way back in 1975), there's plenty of material to draw from, and with the show's 50th anniversary special airing this weekend on February 16 (Sunday special), what better time for our staff to highlight some of their favorites? Below you'll find the iconic SNL car sketches that keep our editors in stitches every time they watch: The Adobe I'm (just barely) old enough to remember the cheap-car craze of the mid-1980s, when the $4,995 Hyundai Excel and $3,990 Yugo GV popped onto the market to undercut established junk like the Dodge Omni ($6,209) and Chevrolet Chevette ($5,645). Buyers literally lined up with checkbooks in hand to buy these new cheapies, so just how low would the market go? SNL answered that question with the $179 Adobe, a Mexican import made out of clay. The Adobe's motto — inspired, perhaps, by Lee Iacocca's famous admonition, 'If you can find a better, car, buy it' — was , 'You can buy a cheaper car, but I wouldn't recommend it.' One has to wonder if the genesis of this bit preceded the cheap-car craze. The idea of a clay car wrote its own series of visual gags: Phil Hartman making his own cupholder by smooshing a can of cola into the dash, Nora Dunn having a parking-lot oopsie and making an instant repair by remolding the fender, and a couple off for a tennis game, the backsides of their white clothes soiled with clay. Still, the funniest bit may well be the Adobe itself, which was made from a Renault LeCar. Even combined with the clay in which it was covered, the LeCar might still have been worth less than the Adobe's retail price. This was SNL at its best: A timely lampoon that we can still laugh at today. — Aaron Gold More from MotorTrend:10 of the cheapest Ferraris you can buy Need a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle. A December to Remember As someone who has always rolled his eyes at Christmas car commercials of surprise new cars with big red bows, it's nice to see SNL take down the whole idea in such a hilarious way. From misunderstood finances to 'aper' (as in, APR, or a loan's annual percentage rate), this Lexus parody commercial is SNL at its best. — Christian Seabaugh Mercury Mistress Younger readers up to and including Millennials have thankfully been mostly spared from this phenomenon, but there was a time when car enthusiasts were more than just obsessed with their vehicles. Frankly, it got a little creepy. Enthusiasts, almost always male, once got so wrapped up in their cars they'd talk about them in ways bordering on the romantic and even sexual, anthropomorphizing their cars to a disturbing degree. This kind of mass hysteria became common enough to merit mockery on Saturday Night Live, giving us the hilarious and disturbing Mercury Mistress fake ad, introducing the world to the car you could literally have sex with (if you were male). Thankfully, changing social norms and ridicule on national television mostly put an end to this, with a late assist from Shania Twain's hit single and diss track "That Don't Impress Me Much." — Scott Evans Winter driving safety:Here's how to gain confidence navigating bad road conditions Royal Deluxe II A car with a ride so smooth, you can circumcise a baby in the back seat! That was the premise of SNL's 1977 ad for the Royal Deluxe II. This was the peak of the Malaise Era, and with horsepower having all but evaporated overnight, car ads of the time were focused on ride quality and interior appointments. In 1973, Mercury ran a commercial showing a Cartier jeweler splitting a $125,000 diamond in the back seat of a Marquis. How do you raise the stakes? Ask your friendly neighborhood mohel. To establish the smooth-ride creds of the Royal Deluxe II (a barely-disguised Mercury Cougar sedan), SNL invites a rabbi to circumcise 8-day-old Benjamin Cantor in the back seat while Garrett Morris navigates the rough roads around Temple Beth Shalom in Little Neck, New York. As Morris darts around various suburban hazards and Dan Ackroyd provides deadpan commentary, the expected hilarity ensues. It's a one-joke bit played to perfection, and while all appears to come out okay, only the adult Mr. Cantor could tell us for sure. – Aaron Gold Toonces the Driving Cat First appearing in 1989, Toonces the driving cat endured as a recurring absurdist sketch over the years. As the name of the skit implies, Toonces is a cat, and somehow it's given the opportunity to drive — encouraging its owner, played by Steve Martin, to convince his character's wife to let the cat take them for a drive. Obviously, Toonces cannot drive, and mayhem ensues. The sketch follows a predictable arc, but between the fake cat driving — and the real cat superimposed in the driver's seat for the credit rolls set to a ridiculous jingle — it's somehow always funny. — Alexander Stoklosa Mercedes-Benz AA-Class Perhaps overlooked when it first aired in 2016, this fake ad for a Mercedes-Benz AA-Class combined believable-enough product placement (it uses, interchangeably, two generations of silver C-Class sedans), real-life Mercedes ad video clips, and plausible vehicle naming (AA-Class? Mercedes makes an actual A-Class...) seems more timely today. That's because the AA-Class represents the latest electric vehicle from Mercedes-Benz... and its innovation, if that's the word, is that it runs on AA-sized batteries. The punchline lands early in this fake spot, which is expertly presented by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, but the continued highlighting of the AA's various "features" go hard in the paint for anyone familiar with EVs and disposable household batteries. Almost in keeping with the ad's backwards-looking battery tech, you can only watch this sketch on NBC's website, linked here. — Alexander Stoklosa Clint Eastwood for Chrysler By now, Super Bowl viewers are almost expecting to see an overly dramatic, pull-at-the-hearstrings, rally-the-patriots, go-America-type ad from Chrysler, Jeep, Ram or Dodge. Sometimes in black and white, sometimes barely even showing a current vehicle from one of those brands' lineups, they're massively expensive ads that tend to run nearly two minutes. There is a clear through-line between Chrysler's "Born of Fire" from 2011, Ram's "Farmer" in 2013, Jeep's 75th-anniversary-celebrating "Portraits" in 2016, and this year's Jeep spot "Owner's Manual." These really kicked into high gear, though, with Chrysler's 2012 "Born of Fire" followup for the Big Game, "Halftime in America." Emerging from its bankruptcy and shotgun wedding with Fiat, just as America was emerging from the financial crisis, the automaker nabbed Clint Eastwood, relatively fresh off his turn starring in the self-directed "Gran Torino", to essentially reprise that role as a gritty, growling elderly person to give the country a sports-themed, Chrysler-sponsored pep talk. SNL skewered the concept beautifully, with a series (here are parts two and three) of pre-taped sketches with Bill Hader playing Eastwood responding to real-life criticisms of the (real) ad, which go increasingly off the rails — and, fittingly, barely even mention Chrysler's products. — Alexander Stoklosa Lincoln Ads What more can we say? Jim Carrey playing Matthew McConaughey as Lincoln's spokesperson? The supercut of these sketches above traces a dead-on impression as it's taken to its ridiculous, McConaughey-y apex. — Alexander Stoklosa
Yahoo
10-02-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
At $3,500, Is This Barn-Find 1990 Hyundai Excel An Excellent Bargain?
It's questionable as to who might squirrel away such an unremarkable car as today's Nice Price or No Dice Hyundai, but that's just what happened. Let's see if this barn find's price has us telling it to get lost. The 1988 Toyota pickup we looked at this past Friday only weighs around 2,620 pounds. In contrast, in its most basic form, a modern Tacoma truck tips the scales at more than 3,900 pounds. That's like carrying around almost half another truck. Simple and stout, our pickup came with a rebuilt engine and a sensible $6,000 asking price. Few of you found any issue with that combo, giving the tidy little hauler a solid 71 percent Nice Price win. Based on present knowledge, the Lloyds Bank coprolite is the largest documented turd in existence. Proudly displayed at the JORVIK Viking Centre in the North Yorkshire city of York, it's a meaty eight inches long and, more impressively, over two inches in girth. Imagine the introductions at smart people parties when your thesis is on the composition and quality of a fossilized dookie laid by an Iron Age Viking with industrious bowels. I mention this as proof that, given enough time, pretty much anything gains in value, whether monetarily or, perhaps, intellectually, for people lacking better things to do with their time. With that in mind, let's ruminate on what sort of person would hang onto and not allow to fall into disrepair a vehicle of such little initial regard as this 1990 Hyundai Excel. What's most noteworthy about Hyundai's first offering in the U.S. is how people were able to differentiate it from the Microsoft spreadsheet program of the same name introduced the exact same year, 1985. Hyundai's first car, the Pony, was never sold here, and issues with Ford's naming rights demanded a different name when its successor debuted here. By the time the second generation Excel hit the market, Hyundai had become well established as a maker of sensible, high-value, low-cost cars here in the U.S.—enough so that Mitsubishi found its cars good enough to sell under its own name in order to circumvent import tariffs on cars from Japan. This Excel four-door is representative of that second swing on the small car market. These were introduced in 1989 and ran through the 1994 model year, at which point the Excel nameplate was retired upon the debut of the model's replacement, the Accent. The ad offers absolutely no information about this Excel's history, but does claim it to be a 'barn find' and in 'like new' condition. It's also noted to have a clean title. Mileage is a mere 23,469, which means it's likely still in possession of its factory brake shoes and pads and might even maintain that 'new car smell.' Based on the stickers on the windshield, the last time this Excel passed its state safety inspection was in 2011, so it's been hiding in its barn for a pretty long time. Specs for the little Hyundai include an 84-horsepower 1.5-liter SOHC fuel-injected four, a five-speed manual gearbox driving the front wheels, and… well, that's about it. Everything else about the car is extremely analog, including Armstrong windows, manual seats and locks, and a sad little fake gauge on the dash where a tach should go. The positives here include a body that appears solid and without major issues and a cabin that looks clean and unremarkable. The downsides are the presence of motorized mouse belts for the front passengers (pre-airbags) and the fact that it's extremely basic, the automotive equivalent of government housing. Could its uniqueness overcome that and make someone pay the $3,500 the seller asks to hand it over? To be fair, this is probably the only opportunity to own a 1990 Excel in any condition today, as these were pretty much throwaway cars once they had served their purpose. That makes this a bit of a conundrum since it's obviously still a viable car, but would it be a smart move to actually buy and own it? What do you say? Is this Excel a deal at that $3,500 asking? Or does it belong in a museum? You decide! Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Craigslist, or go here if the ad disappears. H/T to Whatsupdohc for the hookup! Help me out with NPOND. Hit me up via email and send me a fixed-price tip. Remember to include your Kinja handle. For the latest news, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
