The best road trips take you through places you’ve never been. The best road trips are also those you can enjoy with close friends or relatives. When the opportunity to take just such a trip crossed my desk, I jumped at it. All the ingredients for a truly great road trip were there. The setting: the American South. My co-pilots: my two closest cousins. The car: the 2017 Hyundai Elantra Eco. It was a recipe for adventure I wasn’t about to pass on.
We began our journey in Montgomery, Alabama, home to Hyundai’s U.S. assembly plant. There, the Korean automaker produces the Sonata and Elantra, and the recently refreshed Santa Fe crossover will be added to the line soon. The plant aims to produce nearly 400,000 cars in 2016.
My cousin Nicole accompanied me on a visit to the plant with other journalists. After a tour, we were free to drive wherever we pleased. Each participant’s itinerary was different. At least one team even drove cross-country back to the West Coast. Our route would take us northwest through Birmingham, Alabama, and onward to Memphis, Tennessee, to meet our cousin Bryan, who lives there. From Memphis, we’d drive roughly three hours northeast to Nashville then head back to the Bluff City to drop Bryan off and fly home.
I was at first excited to learn we’d actually be driving our Elantras off the production line. All of the cars were lined up on a conveyor belt, and each team was assigned one in the long row of seemingly just-minted Hyundais. Upon getting in our car, however, I noticed there were already 805 miles on the clock. The cars in front of and behind me all showed similar mileage. Staged or not, these were still nearly brand-new cars, and we still got to drive them off the assembly line and out of the factory. It was a unique experience at least.
The Elantra Eco is the midlevel model in the lineup, slotting above the base SE but below the more upscale Limited. As the name suggests, the Elantra Eco is geared toward fuel economy, and it accomplishes that mission with an all-new turbocharged, 1.4-liter four-cylinder and seven-speed dual-clutch transmission. That engine makes just 128 hp, which it makes up for with a useful 156 lb-ft of torque that’s available at 1,400 rpm. This gives the Elantra Eco good pickup off the line, which made it easier to pull off the highway onto the shoulder whenever we saw a too-good-to-miss photo op or an Alabama hill that needed climbing. Getting back up to highway speed wasn’t an issue, so we stopped a couple times to take in the woodsy surroundings we don’t have back in L.A.
One constant throughout the South was the walls of endless green on either side of the highway. Miles and miles of bushes, vines, and trees frame the road, making everything in between just a little bit more beautiful. The scenery would change, of course, whenever we hit a major city, and each one on our route had its own unique flavor—and I’m not just talking about the food. For example, Birmingham is a former steel boomtown in the midst of a renaissance thanks in part to the sprawling medical complexes that blanket big portions of the downtown area. There are many inescapable remnants of the city’s past, though, with towering chimneys rising out of the ground to dominate the skyline. The most prominent of these is Sloss Furnaces, a steel- and iron-producing facility that dates back to the 1880s and is now a national historic landmark. The site is in ruins today, and its caretakers choose to keep it that way. Its enormous, corroding blast furnaces and eerie abandoned machine buildings tell the story of Birmingham’s once industrial might, rust and all.
Back on the road for the longest leg of the trip, we found the front seats comfortable enough for extended drives. The rear bench is comfy, too, offering ample legroom even behind my own seating position. Heated front seats come standard, but with temperatures reaching the high 80s, we didn’t have the opportunity to test them. I appreciated the 2017 Elantra’s more conservatively styled dash, which has been toned down from the last-gen model. The cabin design is simple and easy on the eyes, something you want if you’re spending many hours behind the wheel. For the most part, interior materials feel high-quality for this class. Most surfaces you regularly come in contact with are soft to the touch.
We drove through a big storm on the way to Memphis. Sheets of rain assaulted our windshield wipers and pooled on the asphalt ahead of us. This forced us to reduce speed, as did a strong headwind that noticeably slowed the car with each gust. But after what seemed like only a few moments, we were out of the storm and back on dry pavement. It was here that we noticed just how quiet the Elantra’s interior is. Tire and engine noise are both muted, and the ride is smooth for an economy car.
At last we arrived in Memphis. Driving in, it was at first hard to see what made the city so great. But with guidance from our cousin and Memphis native Bryan and some help from Apple CarPlay, we would later get a feel for what this town was about. The excitement was high as we approached Bryan’s midtown Memphis home. This would be the first time in two years that the three eldest Nishimoto cousins would be together and the first time ever on this side of the country. Although these reunions are few and far between, whenever we see each other, the years melt away and we become kids again, only with fewer hairpins poked into electrical sockets these days.
Our tour of Memphis took us all over, so I was thankful for the 7.0-inch touchscreen Display Audio system’s Apple CarPlay and Android Auto compatibility. The Elantra Eco doesn’t offer an onboard navigation system, so your smartphone’s GPS is all you’ve got. Personally, I think that’s perfectly fine. Inputting a destination into an automotive navigation system is usually slow when typing by hand, and entering an address via voice command can be even more frustrating. With CarPlay, I was able to ask Siri for directions using my normal speaking voice, and she’d get it right on the first try. That’s how a nav system should work. It should be as simple as it is on your phone, and CarPlay is because it is your phone. The only problem I could see is if you’re in an area without network coverage. The system worked flawlessly on our drive, however.
After a day of driving in and around Memphis, it was time for our first fill-up since leaving the factory in Montgomery. The Elantra Eco is EPA-rated 32/40/35 mpg city/highway/combined, and I averaged 34.3 mpg on this tank. This was driving in normal mode with no changes to my driving style. On the way to Nashville, I switched to Eco mode to see the difference. Throttle response is somewhat dulled, and the dual-clutch transmission shifts up to the next gear quicker than in normal mode, but other than that it doesn’t feel much different. In any mode, shifts are smooth, and the transmission is smart enough to keep you in the right gear for any given situation. It does have the typical dual-clutch quirks, like rolling backward on an incline, however. Steering is on the numb side, but Sport mode tightens things up a bit and also widens the shift points and improves throttle response.
The Elantra’s standard blind-spot monitoring system with rear cross-traffic alert and lane change assist features came in handy on Interstate 40 toward Nashville. Visibility is fairly good, but it was nice to have that extra peace of mind. Speaking of peace of mind, Hyundai says it expects the Elantra Eco to earn top marks in crash protection and prevention from the IIHS and NHTSA. With one less worry on our minds, Nicole, Bryan, and I were free to focus on more important things, like coming up with the stupidest super powers we could think of. It also gave us time to reminisce about our childhoods: how we would steal Easter eggs from each other, how some of us would “accidentally” run over our siblings with our bikes, etc. Nashville was fun, but the thing I’ll cherish most is the time we spent in the car together. Travel really is more about the journey than the destination, as long as you’re traveling with the right people.
On the way back to Memphis, I topped off one last time before heading to the airport. Driving in Eco mode the entire time in a mix of city and highway settings, I averaged 35.6 mpg, again with no changes to my driving style. That’s slightly higher than the EPA’s combined estimate. The Elantra Eco proved itself to be an excellent road trip companion, and it would be a decent choice for your commute, too. Power is adequate for everyday driving, and the Eco trim’s many standard features make it a pretty good bang for the buck. The 2017 Hyundai Elantra Eco starts at $21,485, and for that price you get a surprising amount of content. To get the same features on a base SE, you have to choose the Tech and Popular Equipment packages, which bring the price up to $21,085. According to the EPA’s estimates, you’d save $100 in annual fuel costs going with the Eco over the base Elantra that’s powered by a naturally aspirated, 2.0-liter I-4. By that math, you’d make up the price difference between the two cars in four years—and have higher mpg and more torque to boot. Not a bad deal.
As we prepared to fly back to L.A., we reflected on all the food, sights, and people we encountered on the road. Our tour of the South was brief but eventful. We left with a better understanding of our cousin’s hometown and the region as a whole. That’s what road tripping is all about. And with a fuel-sipper like the Elantra Eco, you can see a lot more country per tank—and have longer discussions about dumb, useless super powers.
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