Hyundai Tiburon Overview

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 lamp 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.