"Driving today can sometimes be a chore, but Hyundai do not believe that means cars should be dull. Quite the contrary. Our aim is to put the sparkle of enjoyment back into driving . . . In fact, we believe the Accent is a prescription that will put a smile on your face." The prescription must be for hallucinogens for the marketing department.
While the Hyundai Accent didn't put a smile on my face, its brochure certainly did. Among the features given special mention, there are the front and rear lights, the door handles - there's one on every door - and the radio aerial. The latter is there, according to the brochure, "to pick up radio signals," (and there I was thinking it was for attaching to the electric Luas lines.) It's the sort of spin that would make Martin Cullen blush. Sometimes you have to wonder if the people who write the brochures ever get to see the car, never mind drive it.
Yet it's nothing new in the car industry. Attend enough press conferences and you start to fall into the industry trance. If you were to believe even a modicum of what you hear, then every new car launched in the last four years is owned by youthful, sporting thirty-somethings, who work in high-powered city jobs all week and spend their ample free time white-water rafting, mountain-biking or taking their - always adorable - children on exotic cultural weekends away.
If you don't fit those criteria, don't fret. The vast majority of cars are owned by overstressed, over-mortgaged folk, who are happy to have an hour in front of the telly and whose only outdoor pursuit is standing outside the pub having a cigarette. Admittedly, Hyundai doesn't deserve to be singled out here - every car firm is guilty as charged - it's just that the gaping chasm between the brochure and the reality of a week behind the wheel of the Accent is so great it symbolises the lack of reality in some parts of the industry.
For all the hyperbole, the Accent isn't actually a bad car. In terms of mechanics, its basic set-up does exactly what you would expect. No, not what the brochure portrays, but what the average Accent buyer expects; a load-lugging, low-priced car that will get you from A to B.
If Hyundai is guilty of oversell on a par with the Ryder Cup campaign, then it's the engineers who will suffer the backlash.
The 1.4-litre engine turns out 96bhp and pushes the car along at a steady pace, though you'll not be speeding into the horizon anytime soon. It can cope with motorway speeds - even if it takes a while to get up to them - and the handling is acceptable, arguably better than some so-called executive models I've driven in the last while given that there's little of the electronic over-management some steering systems have these days.
It's a car that's at home coasting along in a line of traffic rather than overtaking lines of cars on long straights. While in town traffic we touched on 14L/100km (20.2 mpg) at some stages, on a trip back from Galway we averaged a respectable 7/5 L/100km (37.7 mpg).
The ride is okay in towns, but not very capable over more rutted rural roads. Inside, the interior is functional and as the brochure rightly states "conceived from the start for first-class ergonomics." Given that there's a radio and three knobs for the climate control then it wasn't that hard really. The plastics are, well, plastic.
It does come with ABS, manual air-conditioning and it does have a very respectable reliability record, even if it has only two airbags as standard; something we'd not be entirely happy with in what's supposed to be a family car.
And that's it. It certainly doesn't "put the sparkle of enjoyment back into driving." If you're moving up from a monthly bus pass or recently released from a 10-year stretch in Portlaoise then perhaps it is, as they say, "the prescription that will put a smile on your face." Otherwise, that's very unlikely.
If the engineers who worked on the car should be annoyed by the oversell of the marketing department, then they should be furious at the design team.
Consider the other cars in this segment against which the Accent competes: the cool Citroën C4; the smart looking Mazda 3 and Ford Focus; the ass-shaking Renault Megane and the superbly sporting Seat Leon. And that's just five. It's hard to find a model from a list of over 20 in its class that doesn't look better than it.
According to the brochure: "never has the Accent been more stylish". Is this some underhanded dig at the design department's previous work? Yet the root of the problem here is that the Accent was designed as a hatchback. However, because the Irish and a few other markets are fascinated by having a separate boot, some designer tacked on a boot just before he left the office for his daily run up the side of a mountain.
The good news for Hyundai is that the future seems a lot brighter than the Accent would lead you to believe. Already the firm is preparing to unveil this car's replacement - albeit in concept form - at the Paris Motor show.
Due to go into proper production in 2008, from the images already seen, it's a smart hatchback that leans more towards the Seat Leon rather than this boxy offering.
Hyundai deserves a great deal of respect for the strides they have made in turning themselves from a bargain basement alternative brand into a fully respectable player on the world stage. Its range has some very credible cars - not least the Santa Fe, Trajet and Coupé. All are well-priced and look as smart as most of their competitors.
It's also worth remembering that this current car's design hasn't stopped sales here in Ireland. Its buyers are those "A to B" motorists who look on their car as strictly another functional device, like a gas cooker or tumble dryer. For them, the car's styling comes some way down the list of priorities: after price, warranty, fuel economy, boot space, seatbelts, engine, four wheels, vanity mirror, ashtray, and that little sticker on the filler cap that tells you to put petrol or diesel in the fuel tank.
And the Korean brand is building a loyal following. While Ford is feeling the warm breath of Toyota on its neck as it challenges for the top position in the world, the Japanese know the Koreans are not far behind. Hyundai and Kia - now one happy family - look set to enter the top five manufacturers in the world by 2010. Yes folks, the Koreans are coming, though not in the five-door Accent.
In the end, the argument made for the Accent is its price; starting at €16,950 for entry level and topping at €17,450 for the more upmarket version. For this money you'd be lucky to get a new VW Golf with glass in its windows, rather than clingfilm. That this comes with "manual" air-conditioning and a host of cubbyholes and shelves must account for something of a budgetary miracle.
Yet for a few euro more there are some very attractive competitors, never mind what you could pick up in the used market. In particular there's one rival marque that probably wouldn't even feature in most people's reckoning: Skoda. Believe it or not, for less than €1,000 more you could get an - admittedly underpowered - 1.4-litre Octavia, complete with plenty of rear-seat legroom and a boot that would do a mafia hitman proud. However, Skoda should not receive all the praise. Its Fabia saloon is no more exciting in design terms than the Accent.
The problem for the Accent is that the small family car thing has been done with a little more style and brio by other marques. The Seat Leon, for instance, puts a far cuter - and sportier - spin on the same idea.
The Accent is a rather anonymous chore-runner. Then again, that's what some buyers seem to want. If you're an anonymous person to start with, then the Accent may just be your ideal car.