2005 Hyundai Tiburon Review

The 2005 Hyundai Tiburon sport coupe looks fresh with new front styling. It's a more attractive look, with a single large dark-meshed center opening in the grille flanked by fog lasmp openings. Coupled with gill-like vents behind the front fender opening, the Tiburon has the look of a prowling shark, for which it is named.

The Tiburon GT is a sporty coupe with a brusque exhaust tone that makes the 172 horses from its V6 engine sound like Clydesdales. The 2.7-liter V6 is complemented with crisp handling that makes the GT fun to drive. The base Tiburon GS has a low-emission four-cylinder engine with adequate power for all traffic situations, and good handling that benefits from the sporty chassis design.

Compelling pricing makes the Tiburon an attractive proposition. The Tiburon starts at less than $16,000. A Tiburon GT V6 absolutely loaded with leather seats, sunroof, an Infinity audio system, and ABS, retails for $21,229, and the fully-loaded SE with six-speed transmission and Kenwood MP3 audio system lists for only $21,344. For comparison, the similarly equipped Mitsubishi Eclipse V6 and Toyota Celica GTS both list for over $24,000.

Hyundai has emerged as a low-cost producer of attractive cars with performance and panache. The quality of its products has improved tremendously in the past few years, according to the respected quality gurus at J.D. Power and Associates. Hyundai offers the best warranty in the business: 5 years/50,000 miles bumper-to-bumper and 10 years/100,000 miles for the powertrain.

The Hyundai Tiburon has been subtly restyled for 2005. Taking a cue from aftermarket suppliers of aero trim packages, the front bumper on the Tiburon now has a modish speed-racer look, with a single large grille opening filled by a black mesh flanked by complementary openings for the fog lamps. Sculpted edges molded into the bumper, picking up the existing feature lines on the doors and rear fenders, are echoed by similar lines in the new side mirrors. The smaller opening above the grille between the headlights now looks more like a hood scoop, suggesting a feeling of power. In the metal, the car is sleek and compact.

The Tiburon's profile looks even better when counter-pointed by the new front-end styling. A heavily raked windshield and a fastback coupe roofline that sweeps all the way to a high, abbreviated tail, is heir to classic GT coupes of the past. Hyundai's designers have accented the front fenders with vertical louvers that look like shark gills, borrowing from GT cars of the past. However, the Hyundai's distinctive sheetmetal crease sweeping upward and rearward from the front louvers gives these traditional features a new look. In the rear the fenders curve smoothly into the large, almost ovoid one-piece taillight clusters.

The rear styling on the GS and GT models is accented by a body-colored rear spoiler so neatly integrated into the rear deck lines that it's almost unobtrusive. The SE has a larger rear spoiler to differentiate it, but it too sits low on the rear deck, supported by sleek fins sprouting from the fenders and ending just where the taillights start.