Saw my first Tucson today...

[megadethmartyrdethmartyr]

On a totally different note, bought the Mrs. her Tucson a few days ago. Got her a GLS 4wd in Nautical blue. I have been allowed to drive it once. Not to worry, I can drive them anytime I want! ;D I figure I might be able to drive one I own a little more often.

[jgribin]

Emissions controls may be the culprat (SP?) but most other auto makers have figured out how to work around it, and have created trannys that are not laggy. That being said, I found the Tuscan to be ok in that area, and I did drive it hard. I do wish to include the disclaimer that my car is a 7 year old Nissan with 211k miles on it, about 15k of them during my lead-foot stage (I am 20, and learned to drive in this thing, and have been driving it on and off for 3 years, usually during periods that my Benz was having accident damage repaired - i gave up on the benz when it failed emissions and they explained to me that solving the problem would cost about $4k, plus the car had a dieing tranny, and notable surface rust) and this nissan has a dieing tranny, too. So my point of reference may be biased, although I test drive a lot of cars.

I found that Hyundai-Kia non-sport models tend to prefer not to be rushed. I love the Kia Amanti, and may eventually buy one, but it hates being rushed (which at this point, is fine by me). You go around a corner fast, it will grip it good. But it also will lean over far enough that you wonder if you pushed harder, would you scrape the side view mirror, and at the end of the 20 mile test drive, there was little lettering left on the front tires. The tranny is a little slow to downshift (although shifttronic seems to give you downshifts promptly on request), and when you are really flogging the car, upshifts get pretty rough. The whole car seems to be geared towards refinement, and gives up sportyness in that goal (again, fine by me). Seems to be the way most of the so-called luxury H-K cars are.