The most irritating thing about accents is when people who think they can do them believe that just doing the accent is enough. It isn’t. Your German, or French or (heaven forbid) Austin Powers voice you do at parties needs to have something more. It has to have a character behind it, a thought-out persona. It has to have substance. Then it’s great, and people respond. Interestingly the commercial for the new Hyundai Accent featured an almost unreasonably funny (and possibly unscripted) moment where the guy who was hired purely “because of his fancy new Accent” says to a co-worker on the way out, “Howzit Themba!. Kuuun-jaahrni. Check you tamorra, hey”. 

It’s a wonderful slice of throwaway dialogue that just adds such depth to the character and rounds off the ad perfectly. This is a car for South Africans who may have a decidedly unfancy accent. The point of all this comedic pontificating, in my usual roundabout manner, is that the new Hyundai Accent is normal as ever, but has so much thought behind it that its persona can’t help but charm you.

I know it’s difficult, but forget everything you know about Hyundai. Make no mistake this Korean company is now a global player and are producing cars of real quality. As a hatch, looks-wise it’s got a little something going on. It has a longer wheelbase than most of its rivals so the hatch seems elongated giving it more of an “estately” look than a standard euro-box hatch. “Fluidic” is used to describe the Accent’s look, which is definitely a word the designers made up. Of course this gives you more storage room and all that sort of real world nonsense we all pretend not to care about until we have to transport a chest of drawers or your kids’ football team.. 

Driving the Accent, the first thing that surprised me was just how responsive the 1.6 version was with a smoothness through the powerband that gives it a very pleasing pep as you climb through the gears. This is thanks to a number of letters in a row: DCVVT (Dual Continuous Variable Valve Timing) which all you need to know is that it makes your engine responsive when it needs to be and frugal the rest of the time.

Driving an Accent won’t make you the most looked at person on the road, but like most great comedians, you don’t need to shout, “hey look at me, I’m an individual”, you let your personality take care of all that.

The Hyundai Accent is yours from R234 900.

The sort of people who go into the office on Saturday often have accents.

Strong accent on luxury in here. Geddit?

Exterior At R234 900, that a pretty accessible accent, like German.

 The Korean Accent. Very striking.