new purchase

Er. The Azera and XG350 are 4-door "luxury sedans", and the Tiburon is a 2-door coupe with a backseat that's a perfect size for 1 person under

5' tall. Figure out what it is that you really want first. If you have to transport more than 2 people, do *not* get a Tiburon. They're fun cars, but they're not really designed for hauling lots of people or lots of cargo.

ITYM "soliciting". FWIW, I've had a 2003 Tiburon GT for the last 2.1 years, and it's been great. No mechanical problems at all except for the time I ran over a raccoon, which did $80 worth of damage to the trim. The car accelerates fairly quickly, handles pretty well even if the nose wallows a bit during high-speed maneuvering, has a theoretical top speed of 140 mph[0], and is reasonably good in the snow if you're careful. It has more cargo space than you might think, since you can fold the rear seats down--I managed to fit an exercise bike into my Tib, which would've been very difficult in most sedans.

Some XG350 owners (and Santa Fe with the 3.5L engine owners) have complained about the electronic throttle found on those models. Symptoms include a small but perceptible lag from when you push the gas to when the car starts accelerating. If you decide on an XG350, pay attention to this when you test-drive it. I've also heard reports of the XG350 "lurching" when coming off the line, but IIRC they have a firmware upgrade for the transmission which drastically reduces the problem. groups.google knows more about that than I do; this newsfroup, keyword "xg350", see what you can find. HTH,

[0] I've never driven my car that fast, but other people with the same make/model have. 120 was reasonably easy, but I don't drive over 80 in normal conditions for basic sanity and fear of the 5-0.

LOVE our 2005 XG350L. purchased 10/2004.