The facelifted Hyundai Tiburon (Spanish for “shark”) perfectly illustrates just how far this young Korean manufacturer has come in a short space of time.
Given that it’s a sports coupé, Hyundai took the opportunity to use Wesbank Raceway to take motoring scribes through an advanced driving course using the new Tiburons.
Among the new features in the revised range are a new grille and headlight cluster that give the vehicle an edgy appearance, and inside, the sporty front seats have been strengthened in addition to other cosmetic enhancements.
The range comprises two engines, a six-speed manual 2,0-litre and a four-speed automatic 2,7-litre V6, with a completely new model scheduled for release in 2010.
We started the day with a few simple manoeuvres to get to know the 2,0-litre cars, which push out a very lively 102kW of power and 185Nm of torque, before unleashing them on the raceway.
When we did start our laps, the Tiburon immediately felt as though we had thrown a hippo into a mud patch — it felt perfectly at home.
Acceleration was smooth even when we were really pushing the vehicle to its limit and road holding was exceptional. Most of us on the track were guilty of leaving rather large gaps in the convoy so that we could have some fun in the twisty sections and catch up to the cars in front of us.
The power output doesn’t seem to be very impressive, but the engine is an eager one so we never felt that we couldn’t get it up to speed when we needed to.
The Tiburon felt comfortable in most scenarios and responded confidently on the skid pan where we learnt to appreciate safety aids such as ABS and EBD.
All in all, the Tiburon proved itself to be a worthy sports coupé and at R219Â 900, it proved that capable sporty vehicles don’t always have to cost the earth.