Excellent Value - You Get a LOT for the Money!
Written: Mar 18 '05
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Reliability: |
 |
|
| Seat Comfort: |
 |
|
| Build Quality |
|
|
| Roominess: |
|
|
|
Pros: Value for your dollar, GREAT warranty, great handling in bad weather
Cons: the styling makes it a bit of a pain to wax
The Bottom Line: Definitely a great buy. A great vehicle with a great warranty. Excellent value for the price.
|
|
|
| blauvj's Full Review: 2004 Hyundai Santa Fe 4WD |
I purchased a Santa Fe 4WD LX, 3.5L after some considerable shopping around for a vehicle that would be good in the snow and one that would offer me great value. I was fresh out of college with a new job, and I needed something that would get me to work on the back roads during the long New England winters. The Santa Fe has done all that. The 4WD and Traction Control System has been GREAT when it snows. I have never had a problem slipping on the road, even going up hills. When other cars were going off the road, I was easily holding the road. For especially nasty times, the SportTrac electronic shifting was great, I could kick it into second or third gear going down a hill or over particularly bad roads and kick it back just as easily when I didn't need the gear control anymore.
The 3.5L has very nice pickup from a full stop, and I love how much room is in the back when you fold down the seats. It was great for when I moved between apartments. I packed the back of that thing with a LOT of stuff. Real roomy, doesn't feel cramped at all - even in the back seats. Front seats are fairly comfortable, I have taken many trips several hours long and didn't have too much of a problem (still had to get up and stretch after a few hours).
The cost was considerably lower than comparably equipped vehicles, especially with the leather, ABS, sound system, etc., and the full bumper-to-bumper warranty for 60K miles (I extended it to 100K for $1k extra) has been great. I've only had one problem over the first 30K miles - bad gas cap got water in the tank when I filled up in a blowing rainstorm and seized a valve in the gas fill pipe - all fixed free of charge under warranty in a matter of a few hours at the shop.
The styling is a matter of taste, I really can't find anything wrong with it. It has a lot of neat little features - seat warmers, power mirrors that fold in (for the car wash and on-street parking), a defrost mode that defrosts the outside mirrors, the windshield, the front side windows (so you can see the mirrors), ambient temp readout on the digital temperature control screen, no external radio antenna (it's built into one of the rear windows). The outer styling does make it a tad difficult to wax, though, due to some of the sharp angles around decorative body panels.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 26077
Condition: New
Model Year: 2004
Model and Options: LX, Running Boards, 3.5L, Extended Warranty
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
blauvj
|
|
Member: John Blauvelt
Location: Mansfield Center, CT
Reviews written: 16
Trusted by: 1 member
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.