This is the new Hyundai Sonata Sport and there is one thing that is amazing about it. And that is that this is the new Hyundai Sonata Sport.

Now, I admit I am a sucker for a shapely body, but this is borderline erotic. And the fact that it comes from a car company whose boxy little sedans for years all looked as though they were designed by men who only possessed a ruler, well that’s nothing short of amazing.

There is a resemblance you might have noticed to the stylish Volkswagen CC sedan which is itself a fairly blatant ripoff of the gorgeous Mercedes Benz E-Class sedan. But frankly, who cares? If you are going to steal, you steal from a bank, not a grocery store.

Our Sonata has an interior suitable to wear a Lexus or Infiniti label. Under the hood of the Sonata Sport, you will find a surprise. There is no 6-cylinder engine choice. The base car has a 2.4-liter four cylinder lump that cranks out 185-horsepower, a 1.6-liter Eco model and our 2.0-liter turbo with 245 eager ponies.

There is also a hybrid model as well.

The engine provides decent if not eye-popping performance with 60 miles per hour coming up in a fairly unremarkable 8 seconds according to Car and Driver.

The reward for this is 26 miles per gallon combined city and highway mileage. Again, that’s very good but not league leading.

But, as much sense as this makes in an era of high fuel prices, we aren’t in that era right now. Gasoline is averaging a bit above $2 a gallon now, and gas wars have driven it below $2 in a couple of places. So the lovely Sonata Hybrid, along with Volts and Prius’ are gathering dust on dealer’s lots while we gorge ourselves on Suburbans and Expeditions.

But the Sport is just the ticket for right now. Not too thirsty or too slow.

Ah, but he who does not heed the mistakes of history is doomed to repeat them. Gasoline will go back up again, and all the fracking in the world won’t make any more oil. We’ll just recover more of it.

And as if to double down on that prediction, Hyundai also offers a plug in version of the Sonata Hybrid as well.

But back to our Sport model.

On the road, you only feel a slight rumble from the engine and suspension at higher speeds, while the rest of the time, it is a snubbed down, nice handling package.

The Hyundai Sonata Sport has champagne looks, but even my beer budget can afford it. And by beer, I don’t mean something moderately acceptable like Budweiser but really dreadful stuff like Natural Light. In short, our loaded Sonata Sport with a sunroof and navigation system and all the luxury goodies came to $28,610.

Hyundai is moving uptown with the Sonata, and long ago left behind the cheap, econobox image. So who fills that gap in the future? Wait, do I hear Chinese music in the distance?

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