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When I first got into the 200 and headed away from the dealership I was a little disappointed. The road was rough and the suspension on the 200 was clunking fairly loudly — this a road I had just traveled in the Sonata hadn’t noticed any clunking or noises.
This had me concerned right away but over the week though I’ve come to grips with the suspension. It is smooth on smooth roads and on moderately torn up roads it is just fine, but on badly maintained roads the suspension will clunk away.
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On a positive note the engine sound wonderful, especially at full throttle. But even with mild acceleration it offers a nice smooth V6 symphony. While doing so it pulls strongly, this same engine in the previous generation 200 also pulled well but the chassis felt like a wet noodle when you used any of that power — this has been handily resolved.
It is hard to comment on the all-wheel drive system when I’ve only driven the car on paved roadways, but like most modern all-wheel drive systems I’m sure it handles foul weather just fine. What is a little concerning though are the brakes, it seems at times they give up or at least feel soft and non-responsive. I’ve noticed when this happens it feels like the transmission is trying to downshift to keep up and the car kind of jerks forward and back — an odd feeling indeed.
The other notable are the gremlins in the climate system. Twice I got in the car and the ventilated drivers seat was activated, I thought perhaps the system feels I need to cool down — okay I can live with that, although it is odd. But at the same time I also noticed that the temperature setting on the passenger side was set to “LO” which is below 13-degrees, while the driver side was set to 23. I synced the two sides and didn’t think much of it until I stopped at the local grocery store on the way home and when I restarted the car it reset itself back to this odd set of LO and 23.
I could also rant about the park assist feature that guides the vehicle into position either parallel or perpendicular but the issues with it are reserved for the technology not the car itself… in short if you can’t park your car yourself please take the bus.
