Hatch Heaven

The 1986 Hyundai Pony was a fraction longer than the Ford Escort, and this made the “surprisingly spacious little thoroughbred” behave beautifully, at least according to Hyundai. Its most appealing standard features on the 1.5 GLS were front-wheel drive, a five-speed gearbox, four-speaker radio-cassette and split folding rear seats. It had an MSRP of £4,500.

The 1984 refined and improved Hyundai Pony was new for Canada, but had already been rolling off the production line since 1975 was was very familiar in the rest of the world and was a best seller in South Korea. The Pony L had fully reclining front bucket seats, a rear window defroster, full interior carpeting from the tip of the driver’s toe to the end of the cargo space. It came with Michelin all-season steel belted radial tires, childproof door locks, and even a cigarette lighter. All for just $5,795. The more deluxe GL package was $6,395. Of course, if you were a big roller, you could opt for the GLS package for $6,695. All with the proven Swedish Tuff Kote Dinol factory rust proofing system.

Hyundai introduced the all-new 2013 Elantra GT at the North American debut of the 2012 Chicago Auto Show. This five-door compact hatchback looks like alot of fun to drive, with its 148 HP, 1.8-liter Nu four-cylinder engine that achieves Best-in-class standard fuel economy estimated at 28 mpg city, 39 mpg highway. The all-new Elantra GT rides on a 104.3-inch wheelbase and has an overall length of 169.3 inches. The height is 57.9 inches and the width is 70.1 inches.

The 2012 Hyundai Veloster is called a three-door coupe, but it’s a hatchback as we see it. It had a world debut at the 201 North American International Auto Show. It’s all-new 1.6-liter GDI Gamma engine paired with proprietary Hyundai six-speed manual transmission and Hyundai’s first dual-clutch transmission delivers up to 40 mpg highway. It is loaded with all kinds of tech stuff, from a standard multi-function seven-inch touch-screen display, Pandora® internet radio capability, Gracenote® display technology with voice recognition, Virtual CD downloading, AVI and mpeg video playback via USB, Video game console connectivity with 115-volt power outlet, Bluetooth® hands-free phone system with voice recognition, just to name a few. Find more info on Cartype.

The 1984 Hyundai Excel 3-door hatchback’s MSRP was just $4995 with room for 5. At the time, it had more standard features than any other car in its class, like an electric rear-window defroster, wall-to-wall carpeting and full size Goodyear steel-belted spare tire. Under the hood was a 1.5 liter overhead-cam engine and front wheel drive. It even came with the “Cross Country Motor Club” membership for road side assistance.