Trader Dreamer: Hyundai XG

To a certain kind of car enthusiast, there are three things will appeal on this weeks trader dreamer. It’s a bargain barge, it’s got yellow fog lights and it’s got pillar-less doors. It really is a bargain too, the car that has all this and more can be had for true shed money, you could have change from £1,000. The car? The Hyundai XG30.

An XG in Chile, photo from juanelo242. 

Still reading? Brave move, it wasn’t until last year that Hyundai/Kia managed to make a large car up to European standards. The XG30 is without a doubt less attune to European tastes, there’s no diesel, no manual and the only engine is a V6. That all sounds a little American, and it doesn’t stop there, the styling combines the Lincoln LS with the Lincoln Town Car rather effectively. The XG itself traces its lineage back to a joint venture between Hyundai and Mitsubishi, which produced an American style large saloon for the Korean and Japanese markets. Mitsubishi bailed out after slow Japanese sales, leaving Hyundai to develop the XG30 themselves.

The American feel carries through to the chassis; there aren’t any sporty pretentions here. Little steering feel is transmitted through the large wheel, but there’s enough grip on offer and ample body roll will see to it that one is unlikely to push too hard. This isn’t a car that will encourage you in such shenanigans; it’s a boulevardier through and through.

So what we have here is an American style cruising saloon, complete with cushy cruising engine and torque converter automatic gearbox. Unfortunately it forgoes rear wheel drive and a V8, instead settling for a 3.0 V6.  It kicks out a useful 180bhp and 189 lb-ft, enough for a 0-60 time of 9.3 seconds and a Autobahn ready 140mph. You can even manually select gear ratios; sequential gear selection was standard, although why you’d want to is unclear.

Indeed everything is standard on the XG30, much was made of its high specification and low price (just £20,999 new) by Hyundai at the time.  In the Japanese style interior there’s plenty of toys, although not quite Japanese levels of quality. Most interesting is the standard fit Sony CD player; there’s not only a 10-disc CD changer (that’s right 10) but also a Mini-Disc recorder! The practical value of this feature is dubious, but it’s certainly pretty cool. More useful equipment such as climate control and heated leather electric seats is also standard.

That was an impressive level of equipment for £20,999, even more so for the £999 you can buy one for now. The claimed 33.2 mpg average is acceptable for a V6 auto, and it should prove reliable. You’ll be in a super exclusive club too, just 393 are licenced and on the road as of Q1 2012. Need a barge? Well you could do a lot worse than this Korean take on an American boulevardier.

Here’s some I found

Just £750 buys you this straight looking XG - It comes with a couple of months tax and MOT,  and has done less than 70k miles.

This XG30 has just 36,000 miles on the clock, but you still have to wonder whether it is worth nearly £2k.

Finding any mention of service history seems hard with any XG, in fact the only one I found which does this rather optimistically priced car at a Hyundai dealer. £3,288 seems rather salty, but it has had just one owner and covered only 35 thousand miles.

Specifications

XG30

0-60 9.3 seconds
0-100 N/A seconds

Top Speed 140 mph
Power 180 bhp
Torque 189 lb/ft
Weight 1633 kg
Insurance Group 16
MPG 33

Warranty Direct Reliability Index N/A
How Many Left 393

Can I get it in brown?

Beige is as close as can be had it seems.