Review: 2009 Hyundai Elantra Touring -- it's spacious, stylish, and practical, but is it fun?

May 5, 10:53 AMDC Car ExaminerBrady Holt

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The '09 Hyundai Elantra Touring is no sports car, but it's more fun than you'd expect from a Hyundai and has tons of space.

When you think of Hyundai, what word comes to mind first? “Cheap,” probably, both in terms of price and in terms of quality. If you’re more familiar with the rapidly-improving Korean automaker’s recent offerings, you’d likely suggest “value,” because you get a solid car at a low price. 

However, based on Hyundai’s existing lineup, you’d also likely suggest “boring.” Most recent Hyundais are inexpensive but spacious, solidly constructed, and refined, and have done very well in reliability surveys by Consumer Reports and TrueDelta.com. But they’re also tuned for comfort instead of handling and styled for practicality instead of sharp looks. 

Credit or condemn its European heritage for this, but Hyundai’s new 2009 Elantra Touring compact station wagon -- which spent a week with the DC Car Examiner last month -- wanders from many of these points, for better or for worse. 

The Elantra Touring was developed for Hyundai’s European market, which demands a very different small car than the U.S.-focused Elantra sedan. In general, Europeans crave the extra practicality of a hatchback bodystyle, which puts a lot more space into a tidy exterior footprint, they demand a higher level of style from their small cars, and they demand sharper handling. And they’re willing to pay for it.

The Elantra sedan is a perfectly pleasant little car. Plenty of space, smooth ride, good gas mileage, low price, inoffensive but forgettable styling. But no car enthusiast would ever care for its light and numb steering, its lack of tire grip, or its excess body roll. 

Hyundai portrays the Elantra Touring as the polar opposite of this. Its website vets potential customers who try to read about the car with a question about how they feel about cars. Select “for me, driving is just transportation” and it will not load the page, as shown at right.

It’s too bad Hyundai sees fit to exclude its traditional buyers, those who have been waiting for a reintroduced Elantra station wagon since a previous one was dropped from the automaker’s American lineup for the 2001 model year. A small station wagon is a very practical vehicle, with the space of a small SUV combined with the maneuverability, price, and fuel economy of an economy car. And Hyundai is virtually alone in the market in offering one, as most of its competitors are hatchbacks with less cargo room.

Also, while the Elantra Touring is a large step ahead of the Elantra sedan on the car-enthusiast scale, it’s still not at the level of a Mazda3. This Hyundai's handling is surprisingly sharp, yes, with excellent grip and flat cornering, but the steering remains too light to make it ideally fun to drive.

It’s also not as inexpensive as you might expect a Hyundai to be, with a base sticker price of close to $18,000. Choose an automatic transmission and you’re looking at nearly $20,000 for a compact Hyundai. Fitzgerald Auto Malls will take about $3,000 off that sticker price, and the Elantra Touring is acceptably well-equipped without adding options, but that’s no discount over the name-brand cars. An Elantra sedan with most of the same features (minus the alloy wheels) runs over $2,500 less.

Without a price advantage, the Elantra Touring can’t follow the traditional Hyundai trajectory of “about as good for less money” that’s proven successful for the automaker. Its differences from the rest of the lineup must make it stand out.

By and large, the Elantra Touring does succeed at this. It’s not perfect as either a standard commuter-car econobox – too expensive for that – or as a fun car for the practical driving enthusiast, thanks to the overboosted steering. But it’s good enough at either for you to be considering it whether you’re the sort of driver Hyundai allows on the Elantra Touring web site or not.

It helps that the car looks expensive. 16-inch alloy wheels are standard (the car driven for this review had larger wheels as an upgrade) and the car’s overall styling is clean but distinctive. There’s a bit of Mazda3 towards the rear of the windowline, but the Elantra Touring’s higher roof and large windows offer it much more cargo space and much better visibility than that car, and the car’s overall appearance would not be described as derivative. 

(I did hear a complaint about the car’s large piece of gray plastic beneath its grille, however, though much of it would be covered by the front license plate that’s required in the D.C. area anyway. My test car was registered in Washington state, which apparently does not require one.)

The suspension also keeps the car feeling refined. Many might prefer better isolation from bumps, but the car displays excellent control, recovering quickly from disturbances and remaining well-planted going around corners. The standard five-speed manual transmission on the car driven for this review is also unusually precise for a compact economy car, greatly enhancing the driving experience. 

The gearing of the manual, however, keeps the engine running at high revolutions at highway speeds, reducing gas mileage and increasing noise. A moderate mix of wind and road rush keep the engine’s booms at bay, but it’s noisy during engine braking in hilly areas or low-speed hard acceleration. 

The Elantra Touring used about 17 gallons of gasoline in a week with me over 536 miles, an average of just over 31 miles per gallon in mostly highway driving, not great for a small car. With the manual transmission, it’s rated for 23 miles per gallon in the city and 31 on the highway; the highway mileage drops to 30 with the automatic. 

The interior, mostly shared with the Elantra sedan, is simple, high-quality, and functional, but neither luxurious nor sporty. Ergonomics and visibility are sound, though there should be more padding on the armrests. Also, the seats are roomy and well-shaped but too hard -- “not butt-welcoming,” a passenger described them. And the rear seat, which fits a third passenger better than most compact cars, has poorly designed seatbelt buckles that make the belt wrap uncomfortably around the middle occupant. 

The car’s functionality does extend to the cargo capacity. With 24.3 cubic feet of cargo space behind the rear seat and 65.3 when the rear seat is folded down (it drops down easily but isn’t quite flat), the Elantra Touring has more room than some of the bulkier and pricier SUVs in this comparison, as well as such competing hatchbacks as the Honda Fit, Mazda3, and Subaru Impreza. And its wide, tall cargo opening makes it very easy to load bulky items, while some hatchbacks like the Mazda3 have a narrow opening and a high cargo lip.  

What this functionality means is that the Elantra Touring is still going to be quite appealing to those for whom driving is just transportation. A counterpart to the GLS sedan with fewer features, a lower price, and no “sport suspension” would be a good addition to the Elantra Touring line, especially because it beats other small cars for practicality while it remains a step below the Mazda3 for driving fun.

Compared to a Honda Fit, the Elantra Touring feels far more substantial. It feels much more substantial, especially on the highway, without the Fit’s interior cheapness or buzzy engine drone, yet with the same over-light but acceptably responsive steering. The Fit is a bit less expensive and gets much better gas mileage, but the Hyundai is the better overall product.

Compared to the Volkswagen Jetta Sportwagen, the Elantra Touring has a very basic interior in terms of comfort and quality, though the driving dynamics are surprisingly similar. Recent Hyundais have done much better in reliability surveys than recent Volkswagens, however, and the Volkswagen costs several thousand dollars more.

Compared to the Subaru Impreza hatchback, the Elantra Touring has significantly more cargo space, better handling, and lower fuel consumption. The Subaru’s primary advantage is its all-wheel-drive.

It’s a comparison against the Mazda3 where the Elantra Touring will become trickier for enthusiast buyers. The 3’s extra power, extra interior quality, extra available features, and extra steering feel go a long way to making it feel like a higher class of car than you could expect to buy for around $20,000. 

But the Elantra Touring is closer than one might have expected. It’s high-style, it has an excellent manual transmission, and it has surprisingly good handling. And it simply blows the Mazda3’s practicality for carrying people and cargo out of the water. 

The Elantra Touring could be better, yes, and it’s not a typical Hyundai in many ways. But it’s an appealing mix of solid driving dynamics and impressive station wagon practicality.

For more photos and details on the 2009 Hyundai Elantra Touring, check out the articles posted during its stay with the DC Car Examiner:

Day 1: introduction
Day 2: ride and handling
Day 3: cargo management
Day 5: seats, interior details, visibility
Day 7: traveling to and on Skyline Drive
Conclusion: full review