Best of the Bay – Vehicle Showdown

Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.

Part-1

• Welcome to the Motoring Historian
• 00:44 Best of the Bay 2024 Overview
• 01:49 Acknowledging Event Organizers
• 05:24 Event Location: Santa Cruz
• 07:21 Driving Routes and Experiences
• 09:22 Test Driving and Voting Process
• 15:02 Best Cars of the Event
• 19:57 Personal Reflections and Conclusion
• 23:19 Closing Remarks and Sponsorship

Part-2

• 00:37 Lexus GS550 Review
• 06:38 Kia Sorento Impressions
• 10:14 Kia Carnival Minivan
• 12:37 Hyundai Ioniq 5 N Experience
• 17:29 Hyundai Elantra N Comparison
• 20:14 Conclusion and Sponsor Message

Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] Jon Summers is the motoring historian. He was a company car thrashing technology sales rep that turned into a fairly inept sports bike rider. Hailing from California, he collects cars and bikes built with plenty of cheap and fast, and not much reliable. On his show, he gets together with various co hosts to talk about new and old cars, driving, motorbikes, motor racing, and motoring travel.

Jon Summers: Good day, good morning, good afternoon. Welcome to the Motoring Historian with me, John Summers. So today, Best of the Bay 2024. What is that? I hear you cry. I mean, I don’t because there’s probably only about a dozen of you ever going to listen to this. But, you know, what is that? All three of you [00:01:00] clamor. And the answer is that it is a sort of, you know, I guess.

Badge of quality kind of a, you know, trademark, you know, market quality, which there’s been knocking around the bay, at least for as long as, uh, for the 20 or so years that I’ve lived in the Bay Area. And the notion is that, you know, maybe you’ve moved to the area and you need a plumber. Who’s the best plumber you look on best of the bay and it tells you, you know, so I guess there are other products that have come along that arguably of, uh, you know, eating their lunch somewhat, but that was the original value proposition.

And, and, you know, I guess, uh, they still do one for cars and, uh, we get involved in that as. Being, uh, the Western Automotive Journalists. So look, right, I shouldn’t talk too long, really, before I make a point of, of thanking the people who, who organized the event. So that is, of course, the Western Automotive Journalists [00:02:00] and, uh, and Michael Coates.

Let me, let me name you. Um, let me know you, Michael, because really, uh, I see how much work you did to pull the event together. And, and, uh, it was nice, uh, for you to be around to sort of, uh, chair and, and lead and, and sort of organize the, the event for us and, and be the, be the face of it somewhat. So thank you, Michael Coase.

And also thank you. Um, to the people at Page One Automotive, who always supply the press cards for these hashtag WAJ, Western Automotive Journalist events that I’ve done every year, annually now, test driving events annually now for, for must be, must be closer to. 10 years, then to five now. So, so that’s, uh, Aaron and, and Melissa, thank you for, uh, for, uh, you know, working with the manufacturers and making sure that we have cars to drive and making sure that we have good roads to, uh, to, to drive them on.

So, uh, thank [00:03:00] you one and all, and thanks obviously also to the car makers, right? Because they show up and, and give us really nice. Cars to drive, you know, and, and, uh, at no point do you feel under pressure to say nice things, you know, if you want to, you know, say terrible things you could, you know, if I wanted to, to make this a really negative, like, you know, shocking review, like, uh, terrible, like, uh, I could, right?

And, and nobody’s positioned it again, because nobody’s, you know, So, so I, I was worried as I got involved in, in journalism that there would be pressure at these kind of events to, to say nice things and, and, uh, I, I don’t feel it and, and therefore I have almost exclusively nice things to say about what was a really enjoyable event and what was some really superb cars and, and, uh, you know, I, I say that.

I mean, [00:04:00] regular people who’ve listened to this before know that, you know, if I think something’s crap, I’m going to tell you that I think it’s crap. I mean, I’m not doing this to get paid, not in some manufacturer’s pocket. I just like to communicate in an honest way about cars, vehicles, and motoring. And this.

Best of the Bay event with the Western Automotive Journalist and Page One and, you know, these, the OEMs that gave us cars and there were 18 cars, 17 cars, something like that. Thanks to those guys. Um, from the OEMs, a lot of cars came from, um, I mean, I think only one from Hyundai, but a couple from Kia and three from Genesis, I think.

So, um, you know, overall, thank you. Um, to, you know, Hyundai and, and your sort of spinoff brands. Thanks guys for coming and supporting the event. And thanks for giving us the, you know, the cool hot Roddy ones, rather than the boring grocery [00:05:00] getters that, you know, might have been the way, you know, William Woolard’s top gear, rather than Jeremy Clarkson’s top gear, I’m pleased that this was Jeremy Clarkson’s top gear.

So thank you for that. So having dispensed with the, the, you know. Unusual level of structure for me, let me immediately begin with with the full, uh, sort of prattle as as my wife would call it. So firstly, right, the location was was in Santa Cruz. Um, and it’s right on the beach, like my room. Overlooked the boardwalk at Santa Cruz, the beach, you know, there was the pool, then there was the beach, then there was the boardwalk, you know, the waves were crashing loudly, you know, if I’d have, you know, been at somebody who needed silence to sleep, it would not have been possible because even when I had the windows and the door close, you could still hear the waves of the Pacific crashing.

So, you know, even though where I live in San [00:06:00] Francisco, you know, we have a. We are lucky enough to have a bit of an ocean view off out of that house there, especially since the neighbors just cut the tree down, um, giving us a much better view. Thank you, neighbors. Yeah, but you know, this was better than that, you know, so that was, was really cool.

Um, and whilst I’m mentioning, you know, being vaguely serious and actually influencery, which I’m not normally, but, but look, right, you know, in case anybody listens and is staying in Santa Cruz, the dream in. Um, that was the name of the place and it was cool. It’s three stars and you’re probably looking on hotels.

com being that much money for three stars. Yeah, just do it because it’s right in the heart of Santa Cruz and they’ve got decent car parking and the rooms are clean and nice and not pretentious. It’s just a decent place to stay and in keeping with the coolness of Santa Cruz, um, which I’d been to once before many years ago, but It was a date with my wife and it really didn’t go [00:07:00] well and that’s a story for another time because, uh, I guess I associate Santa Cruz with almost crashing the car on a really important relationship on a relationship I perceived as important at the time and luckily I was able to get the car out of the ditch, but I, uh, yeah.

Uh, that’s maybe that’s why I’ve never really been back to Santa Cruz. But anyway, I enjoyed this visit to Santa Cruz. I guess the other thing that I should say is that you get that you can get down there by driving on to 80 and then 17 17 is a winding highway. 17 Pretty cool if you’re, um, you know, if you like Alpine roads, Alpine, you know, it’s a dual carriageway, but if you like Alpine twisty dual carriageway, it’s pretty cool.

Unfortunately, it’s usually clogged. And even when it’s not clogged, there’s like California, like left lane, like I’m doing the speed limit. I won’t move side people. So there’s also cops always over the crest. So, you know, 17, not that much fun, but I realized PCH [00:08:00] all the way down on highway one on the Pacific coast highway.

all the way down. I, I realized that I could do that. And I thought, you know, in the past, I think it’s pretty good, that stretch of road. Well, I’d forgotten how bloody good it is. I mean, it’s too traffic y between San Francisco and Half Moon Bay. But once you get past Half Moon Bay, all the BS just goes away.

And it turns into a really good, like, British A Road, French N Road, But with the most awesome scenery you have ever seen, because you’ve usually got views of, of the ocean. And I know when my parents drove PCH up from, from LA, they said that they thought the best bit was the bit as you come up towards San Francisco.

Now I have to say, I do like it down by Santa Barbara. But, you know, that has the same issue as the bit up by San Francisco, as is lots of traffic. This bit down towards Santa Cruz, it was quiet ish even [00:09:00] in the middle of the day and, and, uh, really nice. I drove down in the truck, uh, so, you know, I just had the cruise set and was just rolling.

It wasn’t like I was doing anything crazy. Um, and, you know, really enjoyed the drive down there and, and those roads are, are absolutely awesome, which is, of course, why. It was picked for, uh, for, for the event. So look, before I talk about the, uh, the test route there, just let me have a look at my checklist here and make sure I haven’t, you know, missed any of the bits and pieces that I should have covered, right?

Because it’s the best of the Bay thing, all of us had to drive each car and all of us had to commit to be there. Therefore, throughout the time. And [00:10:00] stick to a precise timetable. In other words, literally, it was like 930. So I must be in the Lexus. But by 10, you had to be back because then you’re out in the ionic 5n.

And, you know, you had to be back. Right. And, and the reality is that although. You know, if you think of it, you’ve got like lots of cars back to back, you’re bound to be leaping out and taking a pee and you’re bound to, whilst you’re learning the route, maybe take 35 minutes instead of 30 or something like that.

And that, and that compounds, but, but, you know, there were, you know, to be honest, it. Worked out really smoothly. And anytime, you know, somebody else was out in a car that, you know, you were meant to be driving that particular time. You weren’t like, damn it, where are you? It didn’t feel like that at all. That was an opportunity to, you know, take a pee and eat an energy bar in and feel like you could, uh, you know, it was quite a nice little, little respite.

And then at the end, we voted, right? And there were various different categories. [00:11:00] And, uh, you know, I’ll post, uh, post links to, to, to those, but let’s, let’s talk about this. So how do you compare cards of all different price points? And how do you. Name the best of the bay when you’ve only driven, uh, you know, 18, 17, 18 cars.

The answer to that is, well, of course, if you only driven 17 or 18 cars, you know, it is, it’s not going to be the best of all the bay. It’s going to be the best of the people who showed up for the event. Right. But. That doesn’t mean to say that if we’re going to recommend one car over another, that doesn’t mean that in the eyes of a punter, you know, a customer that might be worthwhile looking at the one that we recommended over the one that we didn’t recommend.

So you must drive each. You’ve got 30 minutes with each car and a designated route to drive. I’m going to talk a bit about the designated routes. There were two. One took us out of the hotel, um, [00:12:00] along like a 30 mile an hour, like bus lane, like just obviously pit lane, speed limit section fundamentally. And, and then.

Um, there was a stoplight and, and if you went straight over the stoplight, it sort of wound you up a little hill. And I guess when they were planning it, it’s a dual, so it would have worked quite well. But there was a rock slide and there were people work or mudslide and there was trucks working in the road and 25 mile an hour limit that seemed to be very badly placed.

And I saw there was a college up at the top of the hill. And there was a. Cop issuing tickets there. So I, although I use that route sometimes just for a bit of variety, most of the time I use the coastal route that they’d laid out and that ran West from Santa Cruz, but like stop signs and like strip mall and all of that.

And then that slackens off actually surprisingly quickly disappears. [00:13:00] And then you’re like out in the sticks. So in other words, if there’s members as you can pass them easily, the traffic’s thinned out any of the meaningful traffic that’s actually trying to get anywhere. It’s going to be leaving on highway 17 and leaving that way out of Santa Cruz.

It’s not leaving on highway one. That’s just like local traffic on, on highway one. So hence the fact that the traffic clears quite quickly and, and. Um, you would think half an hour wasn’t enough to explore the performance of cars with 400, 500 horsepower. It was, I’m not saying like, you know, I tested every vehicle’s top speed and naught to 60 and you know, I G meter on that.

No, right. No, of course not. But what I mean is. There was enough road for you to really get a seat of the pants feel for the cars. So at the end, when you were asked to compare them together [00:14:00] and say which the best was, you know, you felt like you had enough information to be able to do that. Just to talk about that process a little bit, so yeah, so we drove the cars and then at the end of the day, we did an, we did an online ballot, um, which most of us did, you know, that day before we left, we were able to post comments, qualifying comments as well, but I think a really important thing to note is something that Michael Coates said a couple of times, which is that we’re all capable of judging these cars as being the best at what they set out to do.

That’s what we’re judging them as being. Is this, is this the best, uh, what it set out to, to do? Very bluntly, a lot of the cars we drove were really expensive and that weighed heavily on my, you know, on my decision making. I mean, I mean, I can, why don’t I cut straight to the chase? There doesn’t need to be any like, you know, [00:15:00] tension, uh, uh, around the, the, the.

You know, my opinion around the awards, I felt all around the best car was the Camry that we drove, Toyota Camry, 2025 Camry. I know, right? Shocking. First he buys a Toyota, then he thinks one’s the best car. But really, it’s just most of the people, most of the time. And it does such a, you know, it doesn’t do a three star job.

It really does a four or a four and a half star job. All of the things, so I’ll talk more about it in a little bit, but, you know, that was a bloody good car. And therefore, and because of the price point, I liked it, right? An awful lot. Now, if you took that out and you said, you know, uh, they also had to do best SUV and best technology and that kind of stuff.

And that gave you a chance to talk about other things. But the best all around [00:16:00] Vehicle there was, uh, the, there’s an, we had an entry level Lucid to look at, you know, a couple of years ago I drove the 1100 horsepower one. Um, it’s my first pod. Fittingly, right, because I said it was an awesome.

groundbreaking car and and since then they’ve steadily decontented and they brought us a pretty decontented car and I was really keen to try it and what I found was something that did not feel that decontented it didn’t feel like Knock your socks off like the 1100 horsepower one had not in a luxury way, right?

The materials in that car was so nice. It had a moonroof. This car didn’t have that, but it also had a 70 grand price point, which, you know, well, 80 grand with the trim, the one that we had, but, you know, that kind of price point, like a semi normal price point, you [00:17:00] know, a lot less than the Hellcat Durango that we drove.

That was bloody a hundred and. 13 like 115 I think anyway, like way, you know, so, so for given, you know, those, those parameters, um, the lucid was clearly the most superior, the thing that fitted the definition of best car best for me, at least, um, I think for, for a lot of the others, uh, as, as well Questions they asked was, you know, if it was your money, what would you do?

And, you know, this is a Genesis sedan, a G80 sedan. It’s a 3. 5 all wheel drive turbo. It was everything I love about my E55. More, and new, and not going to break, and golf club presence, and just more, you know, more performance than my [00:18:00] Mercedes. Let’s be, let’s be real. And, uh, um, no, I’m gonna. put a number on it, but at the kind of speeds where you can measure a difference between a 20 year old sedan and a brand new one, this was a mighty.

Really, that’s really a mighty product was very, very impressed with the Genesis G80. So that’s what I’d bought with with my money. But look, right, whilst we’re talking about whilst we’re doing a like, you know, highlight, we drove this Fiat 500, right, which was easily the cheapest like EV there. It was in no way inadequate.

It did the job just fine. Right. I mean, I personally don’t like the driving position on Fiat 500s. I always feel like you’re sitting on the car. I always want to make the seat lower, didn’t buy one of the Abarth ones for exactly that reason. And this had that feeling, even though it’s like one of the new shape ones and all, [00:19:00] but you know, big trunk and nice inside, you know, basic, but you know, you’re bloody three of them.

In comparison to a lot of the other cars there, so, like, what’s not to like? That was really my thought, what is not to like? And that really is, is the takeaway. The, the, there were a lot of really good cars here, some absolutely brilliant ones, some many with absolutely breathtaking features, and really nothing that I was like, this is terrible.

There was stuff that I wouldn’t have wanted or Didn’t care for particularly and, you know, just the sheer eye watering price of new cars at the moment. I mean,

I’m sat in the garage here as I [00:20:00] always do when I record these, these pods, and I’m looking at 91 GSXR 1000 that I rode earlier today. And, and, uh, We, we just went around the block, you know, didn’t get into third gear, certainly didn’t get, you know, anywhere above 50 or 60 miles an hour, maybe.

It broke down, you know, stalls on me when you have the throttle open for a little bit, when you close it again, doesn’t want to run. Can’t bump start it at the side of the road trying to start it, won’t go. That experience. Both the heavy clutch and your hand hurt in trying to hold the throttle open slightly because it’s got these Mikuni flat slide carbs on it.

So the throttle [00:21:00] really takes some twisting. So like balancing the clutch when you’re like at idle speed, oh my word, it’s painful. It’s like an instrument of torture until all of a sudden it’s the most amazing piece of poetry ever. It’s like when you get whiskey. You know, or I’ve found in the cupboard some tequila that my wife bought for me ages ago, like ages and ages ago, and I was like, I’ll try this.

Why not? It’s amazing. Like I don’t know what I was missing out on. I was like, I don’t know what I’ve been doing with it for the past decade. I just forgot it was there. It’s incredible. So what am I trying to say here? Let me bring this first part to a conclusion by saying that whilst many of these cars were good, great, fast, they ticked every single box you could want them to tick if you were a spreadsheet box ticking kind of person, none of them fulfilled my soul in the same way as the Gixxer did.

None of them. And that’s the tequila parallel, [00:22:00] right? That you can’t rationalize why tequilas Awesome bro, really good tequila. This one’s awesome. I mean, you can try, but you just sound a bit silly. The point is that these are things that you feel in your gut, and great as a Camry is, you don’t feel it in your gut the same way as you do a Gixxer.

Great as a Lucid Air is, you don’t feel it in your gut the same way as you do a Ducati or a Harley Davidson. It’s just how it is as the machines get more efficient. They just get less interesting. An AGA is much more interesting than a brand new Hyundai microwave, but we all know which is going to heat your cup of coffee.

More efficiently and quickly. Thank you, Drive Thru.[00:23:00]

Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] Jon Summers is the motoring historian. He was a company car thrashing, technology sales rep, that turned into a fairly inept sports bike rider. Hailing from California, he collects cars and bikes built with plenty of cheap and fast, and not much reliable. On his show, he gets together with various co hosts to talk about new and old cars, driving, motorbikes, motor racing, and motoring travel.

Jon Summers: Good day, good morning, good afternoon. It is John Summers, the motoring historian. So in this episode, I road tested some new cars. It was a couple of months ago now. I’ve only just edited together into something constructive, but you know, here are my thoughts on some new cars. So my 9am on the Tuesday morning was the Lexus GS550.

I think the information said it was the premium plus. At the end of the day, [00:01:00] when I’d driven all the other cars, I came back to the Lexus and I touched the steering wheel and I touched the shift lever just to remind myself what did the material really feel that much nicer than the other stuff that I’d driven, specifically the Genesis, which were about the same price point.

The answer is yes. If you go to the dealership, either with a significant other, or if you yourself walk out of there thinking these Lexus guys, they’re building to a higher quality than Genesis, or I want that it’s worth paying the premium to have the Lexus over the Toyota. Uh, yes. Yes, this GS550 definitely conveyed that feeling of absolute quality.

And I, uh, I want to apologize to the Lexus because I didn’t mention them in the comments. And I really should have mentioned that really, if the Genesis stuff was very ostentatious and nouveau riche, and I [00:02:00] loved it. but that grill is very big. The Lexus is everything that those Genesis GVs was, but with so much more subtlety and the touch points, you know, they were actually the Genesis has lovely seats, but the touch points of the Lexus, Oh, just so nice.

And our car was dark green and that was so nice. And it was just lovely to drive. And, and I, uh, At one point, I put it half off the road and, and I realized if I just carried on driving forward, there was like a earth bank. So I just did that to be like, how is it going to cope with that? And it just drove up it as easily as, you know, a normal car would drive up, you know, not a high kerb, but a low kerb, you know, it just went boink up it, you know, no problem at all.

Like. Very, very impressive and this is going to be perverse, but right size, right? Not too big, not too wide, not too long can fit in normal sized American parking [00:03:00] spaces. And it’s a bit like when you’re choosing schools for your kid. And when somebody says to you, think about the commute. And you’re like, what on earth?

I want little Johnny to, you know, get the best teachers he possibly can. I’m going to make a judgment on that. And then you’re like, Oh yeah, if the commute is 15 minutes, that means I’m spending an hour a day in the car. Cause if the commute is a half an hour, that means I’m spending two hours day in the car.

Huge difference, huge difference, huge. But at first you don’t perceive that, and of course that reflects on the kid because the kid hates sitting in the car, and if you’re bad tempered, you know, it all spins off, right? So in other words, that commute, that is a significant factor, and the relevant comparison here with the Lexus is that that size thing.

That’s the, the three row SUV. They can be too big. They can feel too big. You can feel like, you know, excursion, you can feel, I wanna add that. F two 50 in Santa [00:04:00] Monica, you know, a current F two 50 is just too big, right? You could, you know, in the BMW you can fit down this car street with parked cars, with another car coming in an F two 50, you can’t, and you just have to be patient and it’s annoying and you wonder why you’re driving such a behemoth.

in city streets. And this Lexus did not leave me feeling like that. It felt it was right sized. Bloody cool. So what else did I write down? Great throttle response. Two screens. Weird instruments. These, these moderns have a lot of screens. And this is the first car I drove. So I was probably coming to terms at the moment, at that time with, you know, the fact that it had any screens at all.

Yeah. Yeah. Couldn’t find the heater. It was cold, so the rep had put the heater on, and it was nice when I first got in here, but then I couldn’t turn it down. So I kept opening the windows to cool down and then putting it back up again, because I just didn’t know how to access the infotainment thing. Now this is what’s hard about [00:05:00] assessing the cars, because that was clearly user error.

I’m sure it has a really easy way to access the heater system. I just have, like, a left handed, cack handed Blood I, you know, I just didn’t learn how, just put the window down instead. I rode so chuckable, the car shrinks around you. Did feel like a car, didn’t feel like a, felt nothing like a body on frame SUV.

My last two comments were, but where are the fucking heater controls? Why the big pointless screen, and then separately, love the giddyup. Yeah, and I did love the giddyup. So, all around great car, marred only by the tester’s ineptitude and inability to find the, uh, the heater controls. And I should say, you know, I drove it on the back of having this Toyota truck, and, and the truck keeps on doing what it says on the tin.

You know, it just works. Which is all I wanted to do. [00:06:00] This Lexus had that feel about it. You know, there’s no like, it’s not showy. The styling apes land cruisers, but it just has that sort of retro feel. It’s, it’s, there’s nothing actually retro about it. The overall experience is very modern, very clean, very usable, very luxurious because of those materials.

It was a very high bar. That first vehicle set I felt.

So the next vehicle I drove was the Kia Sorento, which is, uh, like an SUV, I guess, like a Honda CRV, like RAV4 size SUV. I wrote, the first thing I wrote was lovely inside to look at. Now the feel was definitely not [00:07:00] Lexus, the feel of the materials, but the look. It’s so much closer to something really nice like that Lexus than you would ever expect.

Now the price point here, we were high fifties for this guy. So is there a noticeable difference between the 71 for the Lexus and the high fifties for, for this nicely appointed Sorento, Kia Sorento? Yes. Yes. Now this weird, like hybrid EV were the whole time, which, which I didn’t like. It’s just something that the Kia’s had that, interestingly, the Genesis didn’t have.

And it’s that the screens were curved slightly. I just want to talk about the screens, actually. You know, when I say they’re curved, a little bit like the way a Sierra’s dashboard used to be, if you can remember a Ford Sierra. Um, you know, in the, the, it just bends a little bit towards the driver and they were rounded off.

In the Genesis, they weren’t curved, they were rectangular and they weren’t. They curve towards you and they weren’t [00:08:00] rounded off in, in, in the same way. And, uh, I, I thought on the Kia, the rounding off and the curve towards the driver, I thought that was a really kind of elegant touch. Both of them did quite a good job at putting, making the screens unobtrusive, that having done the back to back to back to back driving of these cars, sort of speed dating of cars, if you will.

Having done that. I appreciate more and more how some makers have listened to what people have said about not liking screens and not wanting everything to be buried deep in drop down menus a la Tesla. And, and now what we do is we don’t have these big, like, tablet embedded on the screen, like, tablet embedded on the dashboard.

Hey, footnotes. We seem to be moving towards these sort of two or three inch high, sometimes more, sometimes four or five. But these instrument displays that are sort of around, like, below your eye [00:09:00] line. And a lot of these cars were doing the Honda, which I didn’t really The Acura, rather, that I didn’t have.

ZDX is the model, by the way. I didn’t really have much to say about it. It didn’t leave much of an impression on me in comparison to some of the other vehicles that I drove. But that ZDX, the one thing that was noticeable about that was the heads up display worked really well. A number of them had heads up.

Some of them it was distracting. Some of them it wasn’t bright enough. I didn’t notice it until the end. I dare say you can adjust to all that stuff, but, you know, that’s just the experience as it was, uh, as it was dealt with. To, to me, but look right through the suitcase. Sorrento had that. So did the Keir Carnival, the minivan that was going to talk about next.

So the content, awesome. The, the actual touch and feel, you know, not so, not quite so impressive. At freeway speeds, it was still responsive, right, which is the hybrid thing, but it really felt luxurious. It was very quiet at those kind of freeway speeds, and it felt as if it could go beyond. Allegedly, [00:10:00] other people, not me, allegedly it did well at much higher speeds than you would expect a mid priced minivan to cope with.

So yeah, so that was a pretty impressive piece of kit, there was just the annoying whirr all the time. Didn’t like that. Now, the Kia Carnival’s the minivan and it did not have that same annoying whirr. It was in a nice grey colour. That was the one that had the head up display that I found annoying. Maybe I just needed to adjust the brightness.

The gas motor was loud when it cut in. That was another comment that I made. The trunk lid was super. Like the load bed was like low, below the level of where the seats were mounted, like the normal floor, if you like. I guess because the hybrid or whatever. The design of it, for space wise, was just, you know, what MPVs always are, but next generation all around that.

You know, that was That was impressive. The other thing that I wrote was that it was surprisingly planted in high [00:11:00] speed sweeping turns. And this is what a coast road allowed. I didn’t think I’d taken it out along the coast road because I, I, that was when I, one of the first drives that I did. And that was when I realized that the forest route wasn’t going to be any good.

And I got out of it at the top of the hill and had a like, like a look around. And you know, I would say that I didn’t do that with all the cars, but with. Both of these keyers, the fit and finish, bloody awesome. The panel fit, the quality of the paint. I mean, I’m no paint inspector. I just like to look round and you know, you just feel like the overall standard, you feel like the overall standard is so much higher than it ever used to be.

Billing got some of that tequila I was talking about earlier, and it’s invigorated me to talk on about the, uh, next couple [00:12:00] of cars that I drove. So, it’s now sort of midway through the first morning of cars, and you now know the route off by heart, you know. Worrying about, should I be turning this way or that way?

You know where you need to be going and you can really focus on just, you know, making the most of, uh, of the cars rather than feeling like half an hour, wasn’t enough time. It was never like half an hour was enough. I was like too much time, but it definitely became easier as the day went on to get the car back at exactly the right time and feel like you’d actually experienced it completely.

One thing I did regret was I used. I did the IONIQ 5N, which is the performance version of like the triangle IONIQ 5, Hyundai IONIQ 5, um, which is really quite an interesting product to look at. Anyway, it’s the most, for me, it’s the most interesting interpretation of the whole, like, how do you do an SUV?

It’s the most interesting interpretation of that, outside of, of something like [00:13:00] the, In comparison to the Ferrari Purosang or something like that, which is sort of not really, uh, it is an SUV, but it doesn’t really have SUV proportions. Ioniq 5 has SUV proportions, but by doing those triangles and that kind of matrix thing they’ve got, they’ve created.

Uh, sort of citron cactus, like completely different looking and feeling kind of product and like the Scion XB or, you know, that kind of thing that can really be appealing and can be compelling. Hyundai’s N brand is. Compelling. They had a couple of N branded vehicles here. We’ll talk about the Elantra in a moment, but the Ioniq 5 N looked awesome.

Really, really did look awesome. Little skirts. The one that we had was black. I saw one on the street just earlier today that was white and, and the black one that we had, it had sort of orange accents. It really did look good. The steering wheel looks like a [00:14:00] gaming console steering wheel. It has this weird sort of push to pass kind of thing.

And a lot of the others were really impressed with, if you put it in like the sport mode, it would shift up and shift. Down as if you were driving a stick shift when our stick shift cars, if you were driving a gas powered car with a paddle shifter, you know, it would even like do the rev match down shifts and you know, snap, crackle, and pop in the exhaust.

So there’s something faintly comical about that, isn’t there? And it’s not quite Tesla’s fart mode, but it’s near that kind of, it’s approaching that kind of, of absurdity. There’s a sort of gamifying of performance. You think about how seriously somebody like AMG or BMW’s motorsport division takes performance, you know, this was, was a humorless kind of business, you know, Bentley, you know, this is a gentleman’s [00:15:00] club.

This is not an environment for, you know, fart jokes or loud shell suits. And, and, uh, Ionic N is, you know, uh, the 21st century version of the 1990s. Turquoise shell suit, isn’t it? It’s, it’s really a, a statement of the zeitgeist, which may be a little bit too much, but it’s still kind of cool, even if you wouldn’t really wear one yourself.

So what else? What did I actually write down about it? Crap turning circle. Feels track tight. I, I wrote Impreza and put a circle around it and that was because I, I, it reminded me of the first time I drove a Subaru Impreza Turbo and I remember coming out of like a greasy uphill. Junction that was like, Oh, I was kind of turning back on myself that the T wasn’t like a T.

It was like, you know, um, so it was more than a [00:16:00] 90 degree turn. And I remember this Subi because it was all wheel drive. It just like picked up at the front. And I’d never experienced that before. You know, I knew front wheel drive cars. I knew real drift cars. I never knew one that had got, you know, the benefits of both.

And that’s what I realized with the Subaru Impreza Ionic 5, it had that sort of feeling of absolute completeness and, and sure footedness. This was the one with the high trunk floor. It was a carnival with a low, huge trunk. It was the Ionic 5 that had the really high trunk floor. Alcantara seats. I also wrote down License Loser, um, that it walks and talks like a hot hash.

Yeah, I mean, that’s state of the art, super cool, hot hatch, awesome piece of kit and sub 60k, which, you know, in today’s world, something that cool for sub 60k, that feels extremely good value. And that was, uh, Because I did the [00:17:00] forest route in it and I didn’t get out and drive it really fast. Maybe I shortchanged it a little bit in the overall best of the bay analysis.

Maybe if I’d have done the, uh, you know, route along the coast there instead of the route up the hill, I’d have felt a little differently, uh, a little differently about it. But yeah, impressive, but. Clearly, right, an event where you’re driving cars back to back over the same route, clearly you have to be comparing them one with another.

And when you’ve got Elantra N, that you’ve driven straight after the Ioniq 5 N, you know, mid size hatchbacks, one EV, one not, one 37 grand, one 57 grand, I was keen to compare them together. The Elantra’s old school. The Elantra N is old school. cool hot hatch. It’s a bit bigger than my Fiesta. It’s, you know, a bit more sophisticated automatic transmission, this kind of thing.

Got the [00:18:00] same like crazy, like push to pass, like turbo shift thing, like, you know, gamification of performance at the Ioniq N. The Elantra N had something like that as well. It also has the same kind of triangular kind of styling on the door. I think it translates very well to, to the hatchback. I’d have saved myself 20 grand.

I really would. I loved the Elantra N. It was, uh, fast. Only really frightening moment was, was somebody trying to pull out on me and I was going quite quickly and, and the car was, you know, in a curve and, and in a lesser car, it might have ended badly. And in that one, it handled the situation very, very well.

Indeed, it was ahead of me in terms of its ability to, to cope with the situation and. Yeah, so we enjoyed that car, really appreciated it, very well designed. Although, you know, it’s a [00:19:00] young person’s car, right? It’s a bit sporty and, and, you know, where’s my backwards baseball cap kind of thing, really? Yeah, the Elantra and Alcantara interior as well, like the engine note.

On startup after the EVs and, uh, you know, what do I do to make it go? Because this is one of the interesting things about all of these cars that we drove, was that they were like different methods of transmission, you know, different methods of actually putting it in gear. And that was kind of peculiar, to be honest.

You do feel it’s like the 1920s where we’ve not yet settled on the H pattern, you know, we’re just like getting there and some people you have a little lever and you toggle it up and others you push a button and you toggle it and the Fiat 500 you just have these buttons on the dashboard like P for Park, D for Drive, R for Reverse, you know, just, yeah, very, uh, Simple and that’s cool, but you know, but to finish up, look on the Elantra N and the Ionic 5N, which are then [00:20:00] natural to compare the two to finish up there.

One feels very much like tomorrow’s product and the other feels very much like a really nice version of yesterday’s product. Obviously, I’d be keen to take yesterday’s. DriveThru.

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