handled great?...i'll take your word for it...it handles decently...but stock suspension isn't that great...and weight transfer and understeer can own you...trust.

 

among similiarly priced cars it does handle suprisingly well.

i drove a 95 civic, a 2003 v6 cougar, and it crushed them. it was preety close to the prelude i drove too.

 

TibNRice, some of us can just drive well.

Heh heh...

Yeah, for a stock car, it handles GREAT. Now, with all the bars in mine and the new tires, it handles FANTASTIC.

 

In 97 when I was a freshman in college, I'd see a dark green tib parked in the lot every day after class. Then I saw the Jaws commercials, and I watched the tib carefully since. After 4 beater cars in 5 years (88 escort GT, 89 Sentra, 92 Probe, 95 Cutlass Supreme), and I'd graduated college, I figured it was time to get reliable new car. The 3rd gen just came out, and I didn't like it nearly as much as the 1st and 2nd gen, so I went with a 2001.

The first time I saw a tib, I said it would someday be mine. I stayed true to my word. wink.gif

 

when I was 16 years old, I heard somebody mention online that they wanted a Tiburon. I didn't know what the hell it was. I turned 17 and was getting a new car, and thought "hm.. I'll check out that Tiburon"... fell in love with it when I test drove it.

I wanted the manual... but when I found out that the ONLY Hyundai Dealers within 100 miles (BOTH of them) had only TROPIC GREEN and PALE YELLOW I said nah... that ain't happenin' (I Didn't like those colors). Then I saw a white one coming off of the trailer... I said "oooh damn, I want that... does it have a sunroof?" Well it had the sunroof and leather, and being only 17 I didn't realize the importance of having a manual... Ijust knew I didn't want the green or yellow.... hence my idiocy and why I have an auto

 

I actually hadn't planned on buying a Tib.

My brother-in-law talked me in to buying a Camaro. At first I was looking at the 2001 Z28s because I didn't know there was an SS option anymore. The dealer in all his glory to make more comission mentioned the SS package to me and that they could have one transferred there if I was interested. Instead he drove me to a nearby town where one was in stock so I could test drive it. I fell in love with it and had one ordered. A couple of months later I took possesion of my brand new, 2001 Camaro SS. It wasn't too long before my wife took interest in it. She liked the t-tops, the color and most of all the power. More and more I was without my Camaro because she wanted to drive it, so I ended up ordering one for her, only in the automatic because the clutch is too heavy for her.

So now I'm broke but I need a car that I can beat up on. I need something that gets good mileage, something that will be on the freeway a lot since I commute to work (I-5 isn't friendly on a cars paint job). I saw a commerical for the Hyundai Accent and noticed the price was right. I went to the Hyundai dealership and test drove an Accent to see if I liked them. The Accent was OK, but I didn't up and buy it. There was something missing. When I got behind the wheel I didn't get that sporty feeling that I did in my Camaro. I thought that even IF I did buy the Accent, would I be able to bring myself to drive it knowing the other option I had in the garage? I thought about it for a while and convinced myself to go ahead and do it. When I got to the lot they had this Black Tiburon sitting there with balloons tied to it and a big orange sticker in the window. SALE SALE SALE!!
I immediatley fell in love with the looks, inside and out. The color was right, and the price.........well it was a steal. They wanted 11,399 for a 2001 Black Tib, power windows, leather, AC, CD and cassette, 5 speed, cruise, and fog lights. That got my attention. I talked to them and tried to haggle a price but they seemed to stand firm. I went to my Credit Union, got a share secured loan for $10,700 and brought a Cashiers Check made payable to my local Hyundai dealer and said "I'll give you this check for that car." After a quick chat with his manager they said "deal."

The only catch was the car had been loaned out a couple of times and had 140 miles on it and a chip in the paint (which they repaired, I can't even see it anymore) which I was OK with.

I'm happy with it. I drive it more than my Camaro, even baby it more. It gets more wash and wax jobs and more compliments on looks than my Camaro does at stop lights.

Sadly though I won't be buying another Hyundai unless their resale value goes up in the next few years. I'm a banker........everything is an investment to me. I just can't bring myself to invest my money in something that has such a horrible returm. I actually own 2 Hyundais now, my wife wanted a commuter car too. I'm 2.5 years in on my 5 year loan on my Tib. Since I did a share secured loan I have a 3.00 APR and right now I have about $2,000 negative equity on it.

 

My story is not like most. I actually got a car when was 15, my parents bought it from a friend of our for a couple grand, its a 1965 Ford Fairlane 500. That car is the sh!t. But when I finally started to drive, the fairlane ended up needing lots of work. I bought some new engine stuff for it, and had it tuned at least a little better. Then all the sudden my pops decided to get a new Volvo C70 converitble turbo. Hey thats cool, so he hands down his company Navigator to my mom, she hands down her old paid off Conversion van, to my newly wed sister so her kid could watch tv and all that van fun, and my sisters old car the tiburon was just sitting gathering dust. So once when the fairlane was in the shop, I got to borrow my sisters tib. I thought it looked gay as hell, like a girls car, I thought it looked like an egg. I fought it for a while, and decided hey it gets me here and there a lot easier than the G-ride, but it still looks like an egg. I drove it for the two weeks allowed, and beat it up good, I took it to some rail road tracks, and took four wheels of the ground a few times, I drove the hell out of the tranny and did dumb sh!t like neutral drop to drive burnouts and all sorts of stuff. I tried to take a fast turn and almost took her into the curb, well then the two weeks is up and I find out I get to keep the car, cuase its alot safer. Then over the next year I started to like it a bit more, and saw the gen 2 veilside kit for the car, I think slowly from there I wanted to learn more about cars and bugged all my buddies to learn, then kinda started lookin at some gen 1 tibby stuff and it went from there, I really didn't like the car until I realized I was practically in love with it.

 

i went out looking for a turbo talon, saw the tiburon with leather and sunroof, and changed my mind.

 

Well this is my second tib i had a blue 2001 to start i traded my 95 ranger in on it cause the tranny was going bad, bad luck with the first one first a garage roof blew off and landed on it ouch then when i got it back i totaled it. But what sold me on my second tib is that even though my first was totaled the drivers seat had seemed to be the only thing not destroied in the wreck i had over 22,000 in damage...(alot more than the car was worth) and the only thing that happened to me i got the flip button on the rear view mirror stubk in the back of my head, yea sounds like B.S. but its true hurt like fu(k 2 but n e way if it was the way the car was designed or just fait either way i was sold

 

I got a Tib because:


I saw my first Tib when I was stationed in Kaiserslautern, Germany in 1998. A neighbor had bought one in the states and had just freshly got to Germany with it. It was parked next to a 1998 Cavalier in my neighborhood community parking lot. (I know I am about to get flamed for this, but...) I thought to myself....dang, it looks kinda cool, but the body doesnt seem to match the frame, wheels etc... (it was an RD with the cool round lights in front) To me, it looked like someone took a cool looking body and just threw it on top of any old frame---kind of like a kit car (or like they took the body off a '98 Cavalier and propped a sporty one on top of it). I thought it was a wierd looking car. Then I saw it was called a Hyundai (my first time seeing one) and I further noticed the name "Tiburon" on it. The name was pretty cool in my book (I speak spanish) and thats what got me looking at it some more and I realized that it had a sharky look to it, hence the name. I still thought it looked like a wannabe-sports-car, but as time passed it grew on me. I started imagining that if I had one, I would keep the body but mod it to where the frame would make it look more like the body and the frame actually go together, you know, make it look like it matched; more natural looking.

After I got to know my neighbor better, I got a chance to see the interior and I liked it. He told me that originally it came with cloth seats, but that he got a custom leather interior that he came up with the design for. He had also made some modifications to the exhaust system and few other things as well. He asked me if I wanted to drive it and I accepted.....

That was all she wrote----after that, I knew I was going to want one. I started researching about them and looking for them in magazines as well as pics over the net. A year or so ago, I saw this site and decided that if I ever get a Tib, I would join up here on the forums.

After the first GK body came out I liked it WAY better than the RD body. Well, 8 years after I see my first Tib, I get the opportunity to get one and for my birthday I went and traded in my 2005 Elantra and drove off in a '06 GK SE and I am loving it.

Why everyone seems to like the RD better than the GK is beyond me, but I guess to each his own, right? Or maybe I just have much to learn. slomo.gif