I’ve always thought that being a motoring journalist is a bit like being
Prince Andrew. Hugely good fun but, in the big scheme of things, not very
important.
Two recent events, however, changed my mind. First of all I drove a Hyundai
Accent with a three-cylinder diesel engine. And then I went, as a paying
punter, to the London Boat Show.
You see, I recently bought a small cottage by the seaside and thought it might
be fun to have a boat of some kind, something that could tow a water skier
and be used for setting lobster pots. So I parcelled the kids into the car
and set off for ExCeL, the huge exhibition centre that is so far to the east
of London it really ought to have a Norwegian postcode.
All I know about boats is that they use up all your money and turn the person
at the wheel into Hitler, so I felt the boat show would be full of experts
who could help me make a reasoned and rational decision. It was not to be.
Because I’ve worked at many motor shows in the past I know why. These events,
you see, are not designed for the punter. They're designed principally so
the people manning the stands can spend a few days away from home, getting
sloshed and doing their very best to sleep with all the agency girls.
So when I rocked up bright and breezy on Sunday morning, most of the salesmen
had had at best 20 minutes’ sleep. Some seemed not to know what a boat was,
leave alone which might have the best hull for dealing with choppy coastal
waters.
After two hours my six-year-old was bored and crabby and I’d narrowed the
choice down to either a speedboat or a rib. Those selling ribs explained
that speedboats were very uncomfortable and those selling speedboats said
ribs lose all of their value in about 20 minutes.
What I wanted, apparently, is a tall freeboard and a deep V. “Absolutely,” I
said, nodding sagely.
Even the names of the boatmakers were meaningless. I’d heard of Riva, but
their only offering — a small speedboat — cost £275,000. And I vaguely
remember John Noakes careering around the North Sea in a Zodiac.
But does that make it a good thing? Or is it a sort of aquatic Rover? We found
several boats that looked just like the Riva but cost a tenth of the price.
Why should that be so? I’d love to give you an answer but the owners
wouldn’t let us on board in shoes and the ever helpful Health and Safety
people wouldn’t let us take them off.
Engines? Well I managed to discover that the absolute best were from Honda,
Suzuki, Yamaha and Volvo, and that petrol was the way forward, or diesel.
Inboard is vastly superior to outboard, outboard is vastly superior to
inboard, stern drives knock rudders into a cocked hat and rudders are way
better than stern drives.
Then we came across the Seadoo stand, where my six-year-old had a tantrum and
we learnt that, in fact, what we wanted was a jet engine because it works in
shallow water and has no propeller to sever your kids’ legs.
“A jet!” howled one of the rib boys with derision. “A jet is usheless. It gets
shand in the impeller and is ruined, and who’s going to service a
shupercharged Rotax motor in the middle of the Irish Sea? Hic.”
I never did find the answer because by this stage the six-year-old was lying
in one of the aisles banging her fists into the floor and saying she’d never
been so bored in her life, the eight-year-old was lost and the 10-year-old
was busy ordering a 115ft Pershing.
I began to think it might be easier simply to buy lobsters from the market,
but nevertheless we came home weighed down with, oh, about 400 brochures for
a wide range of boats, all of which seemed to be suitable.
I shall probably end up buying the cheapest, and that’s what started me
thinking. Is it like this when people who know very little about cars go to
a motor show? Do they come away drenched in salesman beer fumes clutching
lots of shiny pictures of lots of cars? And then end up buying the Hyundai
Accent because you seem to get so much for your money? I can understand the
reasoning. On the face of it the Hyundai Accent appears to be the same sort
of size and shape as a Volkswagen Golf. If you’d heard of neither, you’d
look at the Hyundai’s £9,400 price tag and almost certainly wonder why the
Golf costs £3,000 more.
The salesmen, if they were sober enough to remember, would rattle on about
torque and CO2 emissions and all sorts of stuff you never knew mattered, and
you’d end up as bewildered as I was by all the talk of deep V hulls and
roller trailers.
This then is where motoring journalism starts to make sense. Because having
driven all the family hatchbacks you might be considering, I can tell you
with absolute certainty that You Should Not Buy A Hyundai Accent.
First of all there’s the obvious stuff. The Accent takes 14 seconds to get
from rest to 60mph, and I know people who can accelerate faster than that.
If you buy this car you will not be able to overtake anything, not even a
tractor, or a horse, and that means you’ll have to spend your entire
motoring life only going as fast as the slowest person in the world.
The only good thing about the sedentary progress is that you’ll never know
what a rotten handler your Accent is. But you will notice the ride,
especially when you get the bill from your osteopath for a new spine.
Dynamically, the Accent is possibly the worst new car on the market today. In
every single respect every other car on the road goes, stops, steers and
rides with more aplomb.
On its own, however, I know this is not enough of a deterrent. I was told that
the cheapest speedboat wouldn’t have enough grunt to pull a set of
water-skis, even if they had nobody on them, and that it couldn’t handle a
ripple. But I kept looking at the price tag and thinking, “Yes but . . .”
Well try this for size. Hyundai is not selling the Accent for less than
£10,000 out of the goodness of its heart. It is cheap for the same reason
that a cow’s eyeballs costs less than its fillet.
Korean labour rates are the same as those in Europe. The tax burden is just as
enormous, too, and you have just as many middlemen taking their slice of the
pie. Which leads us to the inevitable conclusion that Hyundais cost less to
make than VWs.
Do not think however that because the Hyundai is made from cheaper parts that
they’ll be cheaper to buy when something goes wrong. I did a bit of research
on this, and it turns out that Korean clutches, headlamp units and door
mirrors are often more expensive to buy in the UK than equivalent parts from
European makers.
And if that’s not enough to dissuade you, consider the implications of
depreciation.
The pipe smokers’ bible, known as Which?, recently found that
some Korean and Malaysian cars lose 77% of their value in the first three
years compared with a 50% loss on various European alternatives. So the
initial £3,000 saving is wiped out.
There’s something I’ve found out as well. If you buy a Hyundai, or any car
from that part of the world, you will be seen as a bore. Invitations will
dry up, your kids will refuse to speak to you, your wife will sleep with
your friends and you may end up committing suicide.
If you want a five-door family hatchback buy a used Ford Focus, and if you
want something new, a new Ford Focus. A Golf is lovely but you’re paying
what the market will stand rather than what the car is worth.
I do hope that my column this morning has been as helpful as the boat
journalist I met as I left the show. You might think that writing about
boats for a living was an even bigger waste of time than writing about cars.
But he listened to what I wanted, and where it would be kept, and then told
me what to buy.
On that basis I found him to be more important and worthwhile than the new
president of the Palestinian Authority.
Vital statistics
Model Hyundai Accent 1.5 CRTD GSI 5dr
Engine type Three-cylinder, 1493cc turbo diesel
Power 81bhp @ 4000rpm
Torque 136 lb ft @ 2250rpm
Transmission Five-speed manual front-wheel drive
Tyres 185/60 HR14
Fuel 56.5mpg (combined)
CO2 145g/km
Acceleration 0-62mph: 14sec
Top speed 106mph
Price £9,395
Rating No stars
Verdict Rubbish
