2003 Hyundai Tiburon Walkaround Review at Automotive.com
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2003 Hyundai Tiburon Review: Exterior

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2003 Hyundai Tiburon Review

GT offers great looks, good performance, low price.
Walkaround
A car's looks are always important -- few people want to be seen driving an ugly car. More than anything this is true of sport coupes. This is where the Tiburon competes and it looks delightfully attractive compared to the awkward styling of the old Tiburon.

Although there is nothing exceptionally different looking about the new Tiburon, Hyundai's own in-house designers have managed to put together a derivative style that looks good from every angle. The car looks bigger in photographs than in real life. It is actually a few inches larger all round than the previous Tiburon and is comparable in size to the Eclipse and Celica.

At the front the four headlights are hidden behind plastic covers with large turn signals that lead up into the false fender line that is actually part of the hood. The front of the hood leads down into a small horizontal grill that is swamped by a large bumper. A much larger five-part radiator grill opening is nicely integrated into the lower part of the bumper and includes two small round projector spotlights.

The car's side profile is the best. It follows the classic lines of a sports car with a heavily raked windshield and a roofline that sweeps all the way to the back of the car. We used to call them fastback coupes! Hyundai's designers have added pizzazz to the profile by adding two false vent grilles and sculptured creases that flare back from behind the front fender along the doorsill and across the upper part of the door. The creases lead into the rear fender, which is flared and has a top edge higher than that of the front. In the rear the fenders curve into the large almost ovoid shaped one-piece taillight clusters.

The tailgate (yes, it really is a hatchback) has no spoiler on the base model but comes with a small lip-type spoiler on the GT V6 with a five-speed manual or automatic. The six-speed gets a bigger spoiler that helps differentiate it. Next Page



2003 Hyundai Tiburon
  
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