Reader Review of the Week: 2009 Hyundai Sonata

Our reader reviewer set out to buy a new car and figured he would go with a Honda Accord or Toyota Camry, but wanted to test-drive other vehicles in the midsize sedan segment. After taking the new 2009 Hyundai Sonata for a test drive, he was impressed enough to purchase one. A month into owning the car, he's very satisfied with his decision. Read the full review, and check out our own first-drive impressions. Post your own reader review here.

Chrysler Promises Cheap Gas

In exchange for buying one of its vehicles, Chrysler wants to render the unfathomably complicated fluctuations in the global oil market irrelevant. Beginning tomorrow and running through June 2, anyone who buys a Chrysler vehicle will get a "Let's Refuel America" card that will fix the price of gas, diesel or E85 at $2.99 a gallon for the next three years.

As gas prices flirt with - and in some areas surpass - the $4 per gallon mark, Chrysler has certainly found a highly marketable incentive as a way of bolstering languishing sales.

Customers will pay $2.99 a gallon with their card at participating stations, and Chrysler will pay every cent of the difference. So if gas hits $5 a gallon, Chrysler's out $2.01 a gallon. With a 20-gallon tank, that's a $40 hit.

We have to wonder if Chrysler was thinking clearly. All it would take in the next three years is a rebel coup in Nigeria, or Hugo Chavez feeling ornery, to cause the price of gas to explode and turn this promotional gambit into a real boondoggle.

Also note that Chrysler is still offering a choice of incentives. According to Beverly Thacker, Chrysler's manager of sales communications, customers will have a choice between the gas deal, a special APR rate or more typical cash-back rebates. With the gas incentive it wants to give customers a sense of stability by trading those initial, traditional incentives for long-term peace of mind at the pump. Of course, figuring out if this is a good trade-off would require a solid idea of how gas prices will behave over the next three years. We wish you the best of luck.

PickupTrucks.com Joins Cars.com Family

In the greatest partnership since peanut butter and chocolate — OK, nothing is that good — PickupTrucks.com has joined the Cars.com family of websites. Editor Mike Levine has been reporting on the truck segment for more than a decade and brings his considerable expertise to a family of sites that also includes MotherProof.com, KickingTires and Ask.cars.com.

Check out the site here and let us know what you think in the comments below. 

Welcome to the family, Mike!

Drunk Driving in GTA 4 Gets MADD, Well, Mad

Mothers Against Drunk Driving issued a statement condemning a feature in the new hit video game Grand Theft Auto 4 that allows players to drive drunk. In the game you can enter a bar, get soused, and then hit the roads, careening around the streets of a replica of New York City in a car that's nearly impossible to control.

In the statement, MADD said, "Each year nearly 13,500 people die in drunk driving crashes and another half a million are injured in alcohol-related traffic crashes… Drunk driving is not a game and it is not a joke. Drunk driving is a choice, a violent crime and it is also 100 percent preventable." The organization called for the game's distribution to be halted until it was reclassified as an Adults Only game.

Given that drunk driving is one of the least objectionable activities you can engage in while playing GTA 4, and choosing to drive while drunk in the game almost always attracts the attention of police, the chances of this actually happening seem pretty slim. We'd still like to know, though: What's your favorite vehicle from the new Grand Theft Auto?

MADD: Drunk Driving Content Should Result in Adults Only Rating for GTA 4 (CrunchGear via Jalopnik)

At the Track, Via Twitter

I’m at a special event for Midwestern journalists up at Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin for the next two days. Automakers unleash all the new models — over 90 this year, including things with M, AMG and Gran Tursimo in their names — for us to test on the Road America track and local streets. Follow the cars I’m taking on the track via Twitter or in this post as the updates stream live.

Twitter Updates

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Cars.com Hybrid Mileage Challenge: Part 2

Yesterday, we introduced the four fuel-sippers — a Chevrolet Tahoe Hybrid, Ford Escape Hybrid, Honda Civic Hybrid and Toyota Prius — we schlepped through Chicago traffic early this month. We took pains to drive as we normally would: No nursing the gas pedal to stay in electric mode or purposely coasting to regenerate more braking energy. Just ordinary stop-and-go driving. Faced with some wonky fill-up numbers at a gas pump on the fritz, we took our results from each vehicle’s onboard mileage readout, which we reset at the beginning of each new leg. Read below for the numbers, along with some postgame analysis.

Today on MotherProof: Roadside Assistance and Family-Friendly IndyCar

In the wrong set of circumstances, car trouble can quickly turn from an inconvenience into a full-fledged nightmare. With this in mind, Emily Hansen extols the usefulness of roadside assistance programs. Also, Kristin Varela took her youngest daughter to an Indy Car race and was pleasantly surprised to discover just how family-friendly the sport has become.

Roadside Assistance a Worthwhile Addition (MotherProof)
IndyCar Series is Shockingly Family-Friendly (MotherProof)

Question of the Day: What's Safer, Audi A3 or BMW 3 Series?

When interpreting the safety of vehicles, we like to use the ratings from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, particularly their annual Top Safety Picks. One of these vehicles earned that top honor, but still it's important to have a full grasp of what goes into a car's rating. Ask.cars.com explains what the ratings mean and how you should interpret them before buying a car.

What's Safer: The Audi A3 or the BMW 3 Series? (Ask.cars.com)

Audi, Hyundai Promise Increased Fuel Economy

As automakers look to meet the 2015 deadline for the increased CAFE standards, two non-American companies have outlined how they intend to achieve those goals and compete in the U.S. market.

Audi will look to take a familiar route, pinning much of their fortunes on the development of lithium-ion batteries and eventually an electric car with zero tailpipe emissions. The company already sells plenty of diesel cars in Europe and plans to introduce more diesels to the U.S. However, it sees the bulk of its research and development being geared toward the plug-in. It hopes to be selling an all-electric car within ten years.

Meanwhile, Hyundai has not committed to building an electric vehicle. Instead, the Korean automaker wants to up its fleet average with small improvements. It thinks it can raise its car average from 32.4 to 37.5 mpg and its truck average from 25.5 to 31 mpg. Some of the changes include increasing the use of lightweight materials, aerodynamic improvements, low-rolling resistance tires, direct-injection engines, and electric power steering systems.

We’ve already seen Chevy add some of these changes and eek out a few more mpg from its economy car, the Cobalt. Maybe this will become a trend.

Hyundai Aiming to Lose Weight, Increase Efficiency by 2015 (Autoblog)
Audi to Offer Electric Cars in 5-10 Years (Reuters)

Tesla Dealership Opens With Nothing To Sell

Silicon-Valley electric car company Tesla opened its first dealership last week at one of the busiest intersections in Los Angeles. It’s too bad none of that foot traffic will turn into sales, at least for a while. The first 600 Tesla Roadsters have already been sold, but only four have actually been produced. A transmission glitch which forced the company to completely change the type of transmission used has led to a delay which will keep the first 300 cars from production until at least December.

With another 400 folks on the waiting list for the $109,000, all-electric sports car, we’re not sure why the company would waste the rent check on a 10,000 square-foot store that cost $2 million to build.

There is an interesting aspect to the store though. It is a company store, not a true dealership, and salesmen are employees of Tesla and don’t work on commission. The company says it’s basing all of its dealerships on Apple’s successful stores.

Tesla opens first dealership in Los Angeles (AutoWeek)