Hyundais are in DEMAND!

They really just want to sell you a new car, believe me, I always get letters from the dealer saying my "99 sunfire is in great demand!" or my "2003 Monte Carlo's are in great demand!"

Had the Huyndai dealer do some work my fiances old 99 elantra and a few months later got a call from the sales department saying they were in "great demand"

You are right that dealers do that stuff all the time.

But the original poster is also correct that Hyundais are in great demand. At my current Hyundai dealership, the sales manager, a man I have gotten to know and respect, tells me that the demand for used Hyundais have gotten to the point where they are looking nationwide for anything they can get their hands on. He is convinced that if they had five times the number of used Hyundais that they do finally get, they could easily sell all of them.

When you combine a brand that provides a good value with one that is now getting a very good reputation, I guess this is what it adds up to.

I bought my Sonata last September. I'd see may one other of the new 06/07 style on the road in a week at that time. Now I'm seeing three and four a day. Sales must be way up all of a sudden.

I'm not sure why you want a 3.8 though, the 3.3 has great performance and good mileage. I got 27 mpg on a 300 mil trip today, cruising mostly at 75. It out accelerates any car I've owned in the past 15+ years and at least four of them had 3.8 liter engines in them.

Maybe mine missed the Reducing Downshift Time Campaign, I'll check with the dealer on it and also verify if I need the updated timing chain tensioner. Looked at alot of stuff on hmaservice.com today. Thinking about the auto door lock at 20 MPH.

I love the performance, but with gas where it's at, you betcha the 3.3 will do! My K&N gets me 31MPG if I drive her right...

Steve

I'm seeing a lot more of them too.

Part of it is simply due to the $199/mo Sonata lease campaign that has been running for the last couple of months. The TV ads have been everywhere. Hyundai always has lots of rebates and deals at the end of Q2. It's a good time to buy.

Also, the Sonata has become a favorite of rental car companies. One of the major rental chains has a storage lot along my commute. Fully half the passenger cars in there are Sonatas nowadays.

Both of these things actually hurt the Sonata's value because the end- of-rental-life cars and cheapo $199 lease cars will be suddenly dumped on the resale market all at once in about a year or two. Good if you want to buy one used, bad if you want to sell yours in 2008 or 2009.

Rental sales and cheap leases do put more of them on the road which is good for the brand image at some level and it does keep the factory working. But techniques like this have also done horrible damage to brands like Mitsu. It's knife-edge risky.

Yes, I had a Sonata as my last rental car. Rental car companies like any car that is cheap to buy. The Sonata is about the cheapest car out there in this class.

Matt

It might be true. There could be a demand for the Santa Fe. I live in a large city in the South East, and in the auto-truck trader, there is only one Santa Fe listed. And the price seems a bit high at 10.495 for an 02

Hyundai's position on the timing chain tensioners is that if they don't have a problem, you don't need them. If your car is quiet on cold starts, they're performing normally.

The downshift time reprogramming is a campaign, so you can have that done for free at any time if it hasn't already been done.

'but according to a close friend, Consumer Reports pushed Nissan out of the #3 spot in favor of Hyundai and I'm thinking we have a great vehicles'

REPLY: Consumer Reports ranked the 06 Sonata with perfect 'reds' in all the system categories which indicates very high reliability. They also give it their 'best buy' status . I have a friend who just bought an 07 Sonata and he is thoroughly impressed with the ride, quality, and value.

Must be why the dealer gave me exactly what I wanted for her 99 elantra when I asked for it when we traded it in on a 07 santa fe.

Pretty much asked KKB Private Party Good value minus what it would have costed me to get her car fixed internally at my body shop and they gave it to me.

Steve I find this hard to believe. I bought my '06 Sonata LX used last month here in Phoenix, AZ and I had a TON of used Sonata's to choose from, they are all over the place because of the rental car companies dumping them at auction. I Carfax'ed at least a dozen at 9/10 were rental cars. The prices are all over the place as well. I got mine with 23k miles for $15.3k which is awesome when most are $16k+.

Paul