I'm a Sonata man for over 25 years now, but my daughter has had 2-3 Elantras. I'm a big fan of the Elantras. The two cons you mentioned are easily corrected.
1) Put different tires on it.
2) Buy a donut spare for it. Of course both of your #1 & #2 were done by Hyundai so you could get your 35 MPG. Which BTW, most people would kill for. I understand that Hyundai is dropping the spare on the Sonatas also. Rest assured that a spare will be included in the negotiated price of my next sonata.
We bought a 2013 Elantra new, but I don't really like it that much. A couple of reasons:
1) Above 50mph it seems to have a lot of road (tire, wind) noise. I have poor hearing and it even bothers me, in addition to my wife. Unfortunately we didn't think to test drive it on the highway.
2) It doesn't even come with one of those crappy "donut" spare tires. All it has is a 12v tire inflator with a can of tire sealant. We didn't think to check the spare tire when we were looking at it. That alone would have probably cause us to walk away.
Of course, these two objections may not be a problem for you.
Pros: No mechanical problems; although we only have 29k miles on it. Gas mileage is good, approximately 35mpg overall for our mix of town/rural/highway driving.