Hyundai Sonata honoured with safety excellence award

The Hyundai Sonata’s superior safety has earned the elegant saloon a prestigious international award. The Sonata was honoured in the first Automotive Excellence Awards, presented by the leading American automotive magazine Popular Mechanics.

The qualities that so impressed the judges across the Atlantic apply equally to the UK specification Sonata. It comes equipped as standard with an impressive array of active and passive safety systems, designed both to help prevent an accident happening and provide strong protection should an impact occur.

The key features include:

Driver and passenger front airbags
Front side airbags
Front and rear curtain airbags
Active front head restraints
Electronic Stability Programme
ABS with Electronic Brakeforce Distribution
Three three-point rear seatbelts
Rear ISOFIX child seat mounts
Jim Campbell, Hyundai Motor UK Ltd Marketing Director, said: "Safety is of paramount importance to car manufacturers and motorists. The award for excellence bestowed on the Sonata is wonderful recognition of how Hyundai delivers the highest safety provisions not as expensive options, but fitted as standard."

Announcing the Sonata’s award, Don Chaikin, automotive editor of Popular Mechanics, said: "The Sonata truly merits the award for safety because if offers a full complement of both active and passive safety features as standard equipment in every model.

"By expanding the universe of automotive safety from the luxury end of the market to the very affordable end, the Sonata has broken new ground and crushed what amounted to very real market barriers."

The Sonata is Hyundai’s best-selling saloon model in the USA and its awards success in the fiercely competitive American market demonstrates the strong inroads the brand is making in North America.

In the UK the Sonata is offered as a single, high specification model, powered by a new 2.4 litre four-cylinder, all-aluminium petrol engine. Apart from its award-winning safety package, it also comes with an impressive array of high quality features, including full leather trim and upholstery, air conditioning, 17 inch alloy wheels and a sound system with radio CD and MP3 player. On the road prices for the Sonata are just £16,495 for the manual transmission version and £17,495 for the automatic.

Like all Hyundai cars, the new Sonata benefits from Hyundai's unique and industry leading five year, fully transferable, unlimited mileage warranty.