Mine was red, too, but sadly no images of it survived…
A while ago somewhere on the internet, someone put forth the idea that cars do not have souls. They’re just metal and plastic and fabric or whatever mushed together into something that will whisk us from one place to another at speeds a might bit faster than walking. Ideally, at least. At first, it struck me as a ridiculous statement, I mean, it’s obvious that some cars have more personality than others. Aren’t Ferraris more soulful, lively cars than Toyota Corollas? The more thought I gave it, the more the answer was no. No they are not. I have long come to think that the owner of the car and the experiences he or she has in it is what’s important. We are what gives a car its soul, and what I went through with my first car gave it a lot of soul.
My first car was a red 1997 Hyundai Accent with an automatic and air conditioning and nothing else. It had four doors and in theory could seat five, and the engine, dubiously rated at 92 horsepower, made me thankful that I lived in southeastern Michigan where there are no hills. I did not realize how good of a car it was until long after it joined our family.
It was the beginning of September of my senior year of high school when we got it. It was slow. It had crank windows and manual door locks and no cruise control. The ride was bad. For some reason on smooth roads it still felt as though it was driving over a sea of marbles. The heavy steering probably lacked feel and any member of the automotive press would doubtlessly pan its handling prowess, or rather the lack thereof, but honestly I don’t really know what they’re talking about and now I no longer think it matters. I replaced the stereo with a CD player so I would have something else to listen to other than the radio and all their commercials and the road noise and that awful, buzzing engine, so at least it had that going for it. It was tiny and I felt incredibly vulnerable in it sharing the road with the popular Expeditions and Tahoes of those years. But perhaps the biggest of its problem in the eyes of a male closing out his teenage years was the distinct lack of sex appeal. When I had a girlfriend at all back then, it was not thanks to the car.
My friends and I were fond of going to midnight showings of movies, and one cold, winter night as we pulled up to my friend’s house at around 2:30 AM, a snowmobile clipped the back corner, twisting the wheel and permanently handicapping the suspension. It took $900 of work to again make it roadworthy in the loosest sense of the word. The Hyundai thus became punishing on the highway, vibrating like a massive “personal massager” whenever the speed exceeded 55 mph. When it joined me up at school, it made the 8-hour drive home for holidays punishing. At least for me it did. It didn’t bother my girlfriend at all. At any rate, we never found the guilty party, as the coward ran away, most likely drunk on his way home from the bar down the road. I never got over it, and I still hate snowmobiles with a fervent passion.
The Hyundai acquired a series of battle scars. I rear-ended two people at very low speeds, and the seams between the plastic bumper and the metal fender did not match up properly. The back of the passenger’s seat was bent, somehow becoming offset to the left so you could never be comfortable in the thing. It got egged while I was working at the dealership, and my boss buffed it and applied rust protection so that the chipped paint would not turn into a hideous brown spot of corrosion. Pro tip: it is not the egg’s insides that pose a problem to cars. That mess is easily washed away. The egg shell, as it shatters, leaves a nice pattern of tiny triangle chips in a circle where it hits, and those chips lead to rust. If your car gets egged, get those chips covered back up somehow.
Probably its most endearing defect was the driver’s door handle on the outside of the car. The bar (or rubber band or piece of string or hopes and dreams or whatever) connecting the outside handle to the mechanism that opened the door was of absurdly low quality, and it was broken twice, first before I went to college, and once again just before it joined me up north. So to get inside the car, if I was alone I would crawl across the narrow center ‘console’ (it wasn’t much of one, the damn thing didn’t even have a cup holder, you had to wedge your drink between the seat and the parking brake- anyways) from the passenger side and settle in to drive. If I was with someone, I would unlock their door and then they would reach across the car and let me in, as the inside door handle worked fine. Thus, in college, my girlfriend and I called it a gentleman’s car. We’re married now. Hey! Now that I’m thinking about it, that car oozed sex appeal.
I hated it before I went off to school, but by the time it joined me up north for one last round of avdentures, I really didn’t. The heavy steering wheel was quick and the car was fairly nimble thanks to its size and it was fun to zip around in on the relatively curvy Upper Michigan roads. It started and ran faithfully (but not flawlessly) every day. It was there when my wife and I started dating. We drove around in it just to be together, driving up and down the snowy roads along Lake Superior, and it was inside it, underneath the faint glow of the northern lights where we realized that we were in love and that we were going to be together for a long, long time. The Hyundai had the most profound sense of romance about it.
The Hyundai was eventually handed back to my family when I left to study abroad in Japan in 2003. I would never again be the primary driver of that vehicle. It stayed in faithful service with my family for several more years, and was still running when we made our first move to Japan in 2007, after which I would never see it again. It did, however, do me one last favor. My wife and I were moving our stuff out of our apartment to my parents’ house for storage, and my dad was there to help us move. He brought along the diminutive Hyundai to take over for my brother’s hand-me-down Ford Windstar that sat immobile in the driveway, and he managed to fit every single thing that was packed into the Windstar into the Hyundai. Sure, the sightlines were all obscured by crap piled upon crap jammed between crap, but he smiled, got in the little red car and drove away. I swear that the Hyundai was smiling at me, too.
NOTE: Last three images from http://www.allhyundaiisuzuparts.com/new-arrivals/002958.html
Also sold out here as an Excel, I hired one of these from rent a dent at Auckland airport and drove it to Napier highway 5 from Taupo to Napier is a great driving road plenty of twisties and 3 mountain ranges to cross and that little Korean shitbox did it just fine, it was a 5 speed manual and the engine revved freely so I just hurled it at hills with a downshift and the throttle wide open, yeah it lurched thru some of the tighter corners with the tyres howling but it did the 450km trip in a easy 4 hours. Good little cars as far as I can tell fun to drive too fast if you arent scared and they seem reliable enough and comfortable enough for the money.
“Good little cars as far as I can tell fun to drive too fast if you arent scared and they seem reliable enough and comfortable enough for the money.”
Hahahah, yeah, just about any car is fun to drive too fast if you’re brave enough!
What a great story .
Thanx for sharing .
-Nate
+1
It’s true, the longer you keep them the more soul they acquire. Great story with a happy ending. 24 years and counting with the 86 Jetta, had a 70 C10 from ’76 to ’06. The ’04 Titan is going on 11 years and it’s soul is coming around nicely. I wonder if a Kia Soul lives up to it’s name. 21 years and counting on the ’85 Yamaha Maxim 700 but if I don’t wake it up from it’s long slumber in the garage soon it’s soul may drift away. Enjoyed the read.
Yes, we humans bring the soul. Cars have vibes just like old houses. It’s because we spend our time in there, and also because our decisions set the atmosphere.
My Accent was a hatchback and I think it was 2 years newer than this. I’m not 100% sure. Actually, I think I had a ’97 because the interior looks too familiar.
Either way, hated it.
Excellent story, I hope you had more cars as I want to read more. You made a Hyundai Accent interesting and likeable. Thank you, my weekend is off to a good start.
Yes. More cars please.
Fred is a true reformed Curbside Classicer. Raised on a steady diet of Detroit’s finest and largest, now sporting two imports, and enjoying the read about a Hyundai Accent. Strange but true… 🙂
LOL…Scary isn’t it?
I’ve seem them with more than 300k km, still going fine.
Being worked daily as a taxi.
And they race them here.
I just sold my green 98 hatchback accent last September it was a total POS but it was reliable. Broken door handles on both doors inside and out blower quit working so no heat or ac. It was a dented up rolling little booger but it served its purpose for two years with no problems the five speed was fun and made the most use of the little horse power it had.
The exhaust was broken so it was loud even at idle.
I put 30k miles on it and sold it to a friend for more than I paid for it.
I kind of miss it.
Great read over the breakfast pancakes. And I couldn’t agree with you more. As one who keeps cars for a long time (forever?), theirs souls develop over time, and it’s hard to say goodbye.
We rented an Accent in Mexico in 2005, and it took us all over the Yucatan peninsula. Somehow,it didn’t look and feel quite as small as it does here. It was a reasonably adequate drive; no real complaints.
My daughter’s BF has one, and it’s also been quite good, except for the door handle mechanism. It must have been made out of cardboard.
Folks tend to think that Hyundais have only become decent cars in the last 10 years; they learned their lesson early on, and with some exceptions, have made pretty serviceable cars since the mid-late 90s.
“theirs souls develop over time, and it’s hard to say goodbye”
This is so true, Paul. I first encountered this sensation when I had my little car towed in 1999. It was of course an animal feeling and not subject to reason. I felt silly for feeling this way about a hunk of steel. But it has persisted through the years with different cars. This effect is stronger the longer the car has been owned and the more fondness felt during ownership. It’s almost like a friend is betrayed- after all, any car may be fixed, and several times I let go of that option.
Aye, it often leads to tough decisions, especially when repair money comes into play. I’m a hopeless romantic when it comes to my cars, and have spent too much for too long to keep them patched beyond reason. But they become part of the family and part of the lore.
I had to replace a busted plastic door handle twice on my ’67 MGB, just another trip to BAP/GEON & a Phillips head were needed. Even our ’94 Camry had a door latch fail, but not quite so easy to fix.
Such high-use parts ought be tested by gorillas, as in the old American Tourister ads.
See this? It’s not about having a fancy hi-profile car. I don’t want the woman who’s with you because of your car.
This is a charming story about life, and how an unassuming car fit right in and came to be appreciated for it’s own merits.
Interesting how there is now a generation to whom Hyundai has been nothing but a provider of good reliable transportation, not the train wreck I remember from its rollout, when radios had to be reprogrammed every time you started the cars. This is not unlike how baby boomers embraced the Japanese cars our parents considered junk.
The Koreans followed a very similar trajectory, didn’t they?
Had an ’86 Pony for a while. The steering was vague and seemed like seven turns lock to lock and it handled like something that was never intended to go over 25mph. Being an automatic meant you had to plan which highway ramps were long enough to actually get up enough speed to merge. I also ocasionally drove an ’87 Excel 4dr, auto and air. Now that was a terrible car. Never thought much of Hyundai for a long time until I needed an inexpensive set of wheels and test drove a 2004 Accent with air, 5spd, power windows and door locks. What a revelation that was over the previous experiences. I bought it on the spot. I drove it for two years and while it handled like an econobox it was fun to toss around and reminded me of the gen 1 Honda civics that I had so many of. Except it didn’t rattle and eat head gaskets on a regular basis. I would still be driving it had a Siverado not driven over the front end. I sold it on to a body man for cheap and it is back on the road doing it’s thing.
I think these cars got better every year. My ex girlfriend has one, a ’98 2 door coupe with a 5 speed manual. Drove it many times. Nice, revvy engine, and trans shifts great. My only real complaint is an ungodly amount of road noise. Seems to be common with Asian cars, regardless of price bracket or country of origin. Friend of mine bought, brand new, a 2004 Honda Pilot. Road noise was just as bad as the ex’s ’98 Accent. Sold Pilot a couple of years ago, and replaced it with a low mileage, relatively rare Mazda Mazdaspeed 6. Sweet car.Wicked fast. Road noise? Just as bad. And I might add, another ex of mine had the precursor to the Honda Pilot, a 2002 Acura MDX. Despite being a perceived “premium” brand, road noise was just as bad.
I’d forgotten about the road noise, it was a weak point of the car for sure, but the torture of driving it at highway speeds with the way it shook left a far deeper impression on me.
I’ve driven a lot here in Japan, and a lot of the roads are constructed in such a way that makes road noise unavoidable, porous so as to soak up the rain and keep it off the road surface. Easy to drive on in poor conditions, but noisy as 100 toddlers at a playground.
My future (late as of Valentine’s day his year) wife took me for a ride in her 1977 AMC Hornet after work and we shared our first kiss that night in that car. Of all cars to have to have a soft spot for. That was April 21, 1979 and we married in 1990 on April 28 and were together till death did us part. All thanks to the 1977 AMC Hornet.
It certainly doesn’t take an Italian badge to make a car romantic! Also, I’m sorry for your loss. I hope you’re doing alright, that was a long time to be together.
Thank you guys for all the kind words. I can’t promise that the other cars I’ve owned are this interesting, though!
Most people would think that almost anything is more interesting than an Accent at first glance. 🙂 And if you’ve been in Japan for a while and driving some “forbidden fruit”, then that might be tasty indeed. But you have a good way with words that made it all very interesting reading.
You make a very good point–we bring the soul, and it can make a car that would otherwise be boring, or even frustrating, seem like a member of the family. Despite all the time I spent working on it, all that was wrong with it, the inimitable GM failing ignition switch, and the fact that it was leaking oil and coolant like a sieve, I still felt a profound sense of loss when my wife’s Alero was loaded onto the trailer and I saw it turn the corner for the last time after donating it. That car had just short of 10 years with her, and though I was only there for 6 of them, it still was more than enough time for it to develop its own (sometimes infuriating) personality to us.
Also enjoyed your “gentleman’s car” bit about the door handle. I, too, suffered a broken exterior door handle on my Lincoln Mark VIII, and I remember several months of climbing in through the passenger door and vaulting myself over the not-inconsiderable console to get into the driver’s seat before I finally fixed the handle. Good times.
Matt…….what a great story…….I drove that little car after you left home and it always made me feel like it was giving me a hug when I was in it. Maybe it was all that good karma you left it with……..
Fun and well written story.
My one experience with an Accent of that generation was in 99. I was considering a second car to extend the life of my 98 Civic hatchback.
The local Hyundai dealer had an early 99 base hatchback that he had an impossibly low price on. Even in it’s no power steering, manual trans bare bonesness, it had something the Civic lacked: strings hanging from the hatch that lifted the cargo area cover when the hatch was opened.
What I liked about it: with that funky Mitsu 12 valve, it seemed to have better midrange torque than the Civic, easily climbing hills without downshifting. The clutch was butter smooth. I was somewhat less impressed with the bearing knock when it was first started, and this was a new car. Ultimately, I just couldn’t pull the trigger on a Hyundai as they had not yet done enough to recover their reputation in my eyes, so I opted for a certified used Civic coupe (a DX, also no power steering, manual trans) instead, which cost more than the Accent new.
Bringing this thread back from the dead, but I feel the need to share.
Traded a laptop 6 years ago for a 97 Hyundai Accent GT hatchback. I paid $50 for the laptop. I called her Elsie, or more accurately, LC (little car). Shortly afterwards, the clutch went out, I bought a different car and parked LC under some trees in my yard.
I’ve come full circle. After a couple more cars died, a friend helped me put in a clutch and I’ve sorted out a lot of the same issues that most of you mentioned. Door handles, road noise etc.. I never had the a/c working, so one day I just bought a can of freon and gave it a try. The a/c compressor started right up and cold air has been blowing ever since.
I’m really starting to like this car.
It’s got personality.
In keeping with the theme of extreme value, I installed all new speakers I got for free and I’m currently in waiting on a $14 Bluetooth head unit that has surprisingly good reviews.
Let’s see how far it will go.
Covid 19 shutdowns and social distancing have given me time to fix even more. Next month, maybe a full interior scrub and wash with a rug Doctor.