A beautiful responsive car whose insides did not reach the quality of its exterior.
The NLine package feels like they had to strip the quality of the interior to put all the money into the exterior looks and performance. The car drives beautifully, it responds to all commands immediately, the steering allows you to zip around things, the added power of the turbo really drives home that this is not your base Elantra. Where this car fails to meet expectations is inside. Things were either overlooked or ignored. The cup holders were designed too deep to where you’re basically grabbing everything by the lid. There is no sunglasses compartment. Storage is minimal. The wireless charging pad is made almost useless if you’re phone resides inside of a case. The standard transmission has this big open area on the left of the steering wheel. In the automatic version it is where the “sport” mode button is, since that’s not a thing on the standard it’s just empty and has a design in it making it seem like it does something but it’s useless. The area could’ve been used to implement a 12v socket for a dash came or a phone mount. The biggest problem that it had on the inside is build quality. If you lean in the center console it creaks. If you use the center console handle it creaks. If you push on the dash it creaks. It just feels and sounds very cheap and takes away from the beautiful exterior. If I were to rate this car not considering the interior it’s a 8.5/10. But the interior is a part of the whole experience, I don’t care what the car looks like on the outside if I’m sitting inside with creaking noises being made everytime I turn, lean on the center console, use a handle. It makes it feel like the car was made in 2002 and not 2022.