Join me on a tour in the strange house of oddities.
Come as I show you the car that time and the world forgot.
There it is, the Hyundai Azera.
I had big hopes with this car but it turns out I was the president of a fan club of about this many people.
Now they're relaunching it.
Ever seen one in the wild that wasn't a rental?
Probably not.
Neither have I. But this is a much better looking car now and I'm gonna give it a big push.
It actually is the last car in Hyundai's plan to completely blow out their whole line
and redesign it across 24 months, which they have now completed.
It has their fluidic sculpture look to it, a little gaudy to my eye as is the new Sonata which I also love as a car, but I'd love to see what Kia's designer, Pete Schreyer, would do with this guy.
Anyway, 3.3 liter gasoline direct-injection V6 in them, 293 horsepower and it moves this biggish car at a combined 23 MPG.
One choice only on the gearbox, 6-speed automatic.
What I like about it is the content that it upped on the tech.
We've got standard
rear view camera, standard touchscreen head unit with nav, and standard Hyundai blue link which is their new connected telematics system.
So, they're slotting this guy in the mid-20s I'm sure.
It comes out in 2012; time and price to be determined.
The question is, how well will it compete against its cousin, the very popular Sonata?
Or its other cousin upscale, the 2 Genesis twins?
They got a big of a juggling act here.
Now they're not set yet on when in 2012 the new Azera comes out, but we'll assume early in the year or they'd call it a 2013.
And pricing, gonna be somewhere in the mid-20s I'm sure.
That's where the outgoing models slotted about 5 grand above Sonata, and this one definitely looks about 5 grand nicer in person.
