Hi all.
Looking for advice here. Thanks in advance if anyone can help.
Thanks in part to this newsgroup I've been surfing the Internet for info on Hyundai. I still plan to seriously look at an '07 Elantra for my next car, when the new Elantra finally hits the streets. (Should not be long now.)
Anyway, a local reputable used car dealer has several used Hyundais for sale. Just for fun, I looked up all the info I could find about all of them. The 2003 Accent piqued my interest. There's at best an outside chance I would seriously consider buying an Accent, since it's just too small, but....how does one tell if an '03 Accent is an 'older' or 'newer' version?
It's important because the newer version gets much better marks for safety in NHTSA crash testing. We're talking better by a wide margin here, for reasons that are not clear to me.
The NHTSA site lists the cut-off date as Dec. 20, 2002 and Jan. 5,
2003, respectively, for the two crash test results that changed. I know the factory sticker on the car door or wherever should provide the month it rolled off the assembly line....but as far as I know it does not give the precise date.Is there any way to tell from the sticker, the VIN or whatever, just when the car was assembled? The first few digits of the VIN on the car in question are: KMHCG45.
Also the model I looked at from the local dealer has side airbags, which were optional for the '03 Accent. Does that by itself mean the car is a later release model and does the presence of side airbags by itself mean the car gets the newer, much higher crash test scores?
Sorry if these are silly questions. I'm still feeling my around the online world of Hyundais and cars in general.
Thanks and regards, Eric M