2003 Hyundai Sonata Gls Sedan Automatic, Sunroof **one Owner** Low $$ **fl on 2040-cars

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Hyundai and Rhys Millen reunite, will return to Pikes Peak with new RWD racer, Genesis Coupe

Last September, Hyundai confirmed that it was exiting all of its motorsports programs in North America. That left Rhys Millen Racing without a title sponsor for its Formula Drift and Global RallyCross Championship series challengers. It also looked to have meant the end of a partnership that last year resulted in a record-setting run at Pikes Peak when Rhys Millen established the new benchmark for a run up the Colorado mountain in a production-based race car.
Hyundai clarified that September report by saying it was "reconsidering our continued involvement in Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, having achieved the world record in a Hyundai Genesis Coupe this year." The return is official, with Hyundai saying it is going back to the peak with Millen and two cars, one of them a "purpose-built unlimited class rear-drive," the other being the Hyundai Genesis Coupe-based racer that set last year's record in the time attack two-wheel-drive class.
Hyundai wants to show off the strength of its engineering, so the unlimited car will have something like 900 horsepower and 800 pound-feet of torque while using the production block, cylinder heads, bearings and accessories of its Lambda V6 engine. You can read more about the effort in the press release below, and click the image above for an enlarged view of what's coming.

2016 Hyundai Sonata PHEV will be a 50-state car, sort of

Technically, the upcoming 2016 Hyundai Sonata Plug In Hybrid will be available in all 50 states. It will just be a lot easier to get in the ten ZEV states. That's because in the 40 states that do not follow California's Zero Emission Vehicle regulations, Hyundai dealers will not be stocking the plug-in version of the Sonata when it goes on sale in the fall of 2015. In the ten ZEV states (California, Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont), Hyundai will stock and sell the PHEV Sonata just like any other model, with numerous colors and trim levels available on dealer lots. In the other 40 states, "we're not going to encourage dealers to stock them," because the company expects demand to be low, said Mike O'Brien, Hyundai's vice president of corporate and product planning. O'Brien was speaking at a launch event for the two new Sonatas in California this week. Hyundai has a reason for choosing the ZEV states as a starting point, O'Brien said. "The ten states are spending more money on charging infrastructure, so you can park at work, you can park while you're in the grocery store, and you can charge your car while you're doing it." In any other state, where the plug-in infrastructure is weaker, a customer can order a PHEV Sonata just as if they were going to get a specific color Veloster that the local dealer didn't have in stock, O'Brien said. "It's really no different." "If you just look at the sales, basically all our competitors, over half of their plug-in hybrid sales are right here in the state of California," O'Brien said. "Usually, much more than half. If you cover the ZEV states, you're going to cover over 85 percent of the sales already. And we're going to make sure that our dealers can accommodate and customers that wish to buy outside those states." In other ways, the PHEV buying process will be similar. The customer can choose, at time of purchase, to rely on standard 110-volt outlets or to work with the dealer to install a Level 2, 240-volt charger at their home. Hyundai will train its dealers to offer a preferred partner's charger (Hyundai would not specify which company it will be working with). With 110, an empty-to-full charge of the 9.8-kWh lithium-ion polymer battery will take around nine hours, but with Level 2 it'll be around three hours. "The essential technical elements [of the PHEV] are the same as the hybrid," O'Brien said.

Edmunds ranks the best used cars for 2013

When people ask us what car we would recommend for them, it's usually not easy to answer. To make a useful recommendation we must consider which of the numerous vehicle segments fits their needs best, and then choose one of the many vehicles offered in each segment. For some people, new cars don't meet their expectations of value, because they lose so much of it the moment they are purchased and driven off the dealer lot. For them, there's always the used-car market, where great deals can be found, but cars' histories of reliability and maintenance records - and perhaps that Certified Pre-Owned warranty - become ever-important factors playing into purchase choice.
To help out, Edmunds has done us the favor of assembling a list of the best used vehicles money can buy, covering model years 2006-2011, according to what it considers the most important criteria when shopping for used autos: reliability, safety, value and availability. That means unreliable, unsafe, super-expensive or limited-edition models don't appear on the list, but instead cars from each segment that are more likely to satisfy the general population.
There are some real goodies on the list, including but not limited to vehicles such as the capable Honda Fit, the cultish Honda Accord coupe (which can be had with a 240-horsepower V6 and a six-speed manual transmission some years), and the powerful Chevrolet Corvette. While Edmunds' choice of the Volvo C70 for best used convertible baffled us at first (not that it's a bad car), it redeemed itself by stating that the Mazda MX-5 still is an unofficial top choice if you don't require more than two seats.