The headline is hyperbole, granted. I’m 54 years old. I’ve had a lot of bad days. Was this one the worst? Impossible to say. Can I name a worse one off the top of my head? Now that I think about it, no! But we’ll get to that.
Let’s talk about the car first. The vaunted Hyundai Elantra N! The car known throughout the automotive-YouTube and reddit-forum universe as the budget alternative to the Honda Civic Type R and Toyota Corolla GR, offering up 98 percent of their performance at a ten-thousand-dollar discount (more when you factor in dealer gouging). Former BMW M-father Albert Biermann’s gift to the common folk: a track-ready weapon that’ll do double-duty as a humble family sedan when needed, but is never more than a flick of a baby-blue N button away from springing into full rifle-shot-backfire action. What’s not to love?
Mine was a Christmas present to myself a couple years ago. For most of my life I’ve exclusively driven beater shitboxes — for the longest time taking a perverse pride in never having spent more than $2,500 on any of them — but when my latest acquisition, a Saab 9-5 Aero wagon with a sketchy title history, started showing signs that its head-gasket issues might have less to do with the head than the block, I’d finally had enough. Time to act like a grown-up for once and buy myself a car with an actual warranty.
A crushingly depressing conclusion at the time, because I generally hate new cars. The weight, the bloat, the superfluous and gimmicky tech, the pursuit of irrelevant numbers and marketing B.S. that only serves to further distance drivers from the act of driving — it all just bums me out. I hate automatic transmissions. All of them. I don’t care how “good” they are. New cars suck. I told you: I’m old.
But then I remembered the Veloster N I’d driven a few years prior at the Rolex 24. I was in Daytona for a story about Hyundai’s nascent IMSA program, with Bryan Herta Autosport running a team of TCRs in the Michelin Pilot Challenge. When hotshoe Michael Lewis took me for a lap in my completely stock street car I was legitimately floored by the amount of speed he carried through the infield, and he gushed about how closely the dynamics of the road car mirrored those of its racer-fied siblings. (Lewis would go on to win three of BHA’s subsequent five-and-counting championships in the years since.) The car was affordable, fun, and — most memorably — it felt special.
By mid-2022 when I was shopping, though, the Veloster’s funky asymmetrical hot-hatch configuration was being phased out in favor of the more conventional four-door Elantra. Same drivetrain, similar suspension setup, basically all of the Hyundai N goodness in a slightly-longer-wheelbase, more passenger-friendly package. And cheaper, weirdly. I honestly preferred the looks of the Veloster but wasn’t about to pay an extra thousand bucks for a jankier interior. Elantra N it was, then.
If you recall, 2022 was also the year we all learned to blame whatever was wrong in our lives on the global supply chain, and there was a waiting list for pretty much everything; the Elantra N had gone on sale late in 2021 but I’d seen exactly one in the wild and showroom floors were barren. After a few weeks of getting dicked around by out-of-state dealerships, I found the least awful local outlet and put down a deposit that made me first in line for their next 6-speed manual allocation.
Six months later it finally arrived, as I say, days before Christmas. A white one. I didn’t particularly care about the color, but at some point during that interminable wait I’d had a dream about a white one, so this felt strangely fated. I brought in the set of Michelin X-Ices mounted on Sparco Terras I had on deck for this very occasion, signed the paperwork while they threw them on, and took delivery of the first and almost certainly last new car I will ever buy. Granted, I’m not that old, but I say this even now because I just can’t imagine there ever again being another new car that I will both be able to afford and, crucially, want. They don’t make ’em like this anymore!
Unsurprisingly, the car kicked ass. I loved it from that first drive home, loved it even more after 600 diligent break-in miles when I could finally put my foot in it, loved it more still come spring when those winter tires got swapped out for the ridiculously grippy Pilot Sports it shipped with. Total Jekyll and Hyde personality, docile and chill around town but an absolute bastard when called upon; quick and responsive, with the most hilariously light rear end I’ve ever experienced in a front-drive car. The annoying tech was all easily (and permanently) disabled, the useful tech intuitive and elegantly integrated with physical controls — other manufacturers take note: this is how you do a modern interior — and it was a simple matter to configure those N buttons in a way that allowed me to seamlessly alternate between what I thought of as Eco-Grandma, Fast-but-Comfortable, Firmed-Up-but-Not-Aggro, and Full-Send Menace-to-Society modes. My twelve-year-old daughter who couldn’t care less about cars loved it; her friends loved it; suddenly I was the cool dad on account of my hot rod Hyundai, go figure. Even the car’s hideous grill was redeemed when my high school bandmate remarked upon its unmistakable resemblance to the visage of one Paul Stanley, something that is impossible to un-see once it’s pointed out to you. We dubbed it the Carchild.
None of this came as a surprise. I knew I was going to like the car; that’s why I bought it. What I wasn’t expecting, though, was just how much fun it would be to drive something that I loved so unreservedly. How rare, in our complicated world, to be able to feel just uncomplicatedly good about something! Hell, the Ns are manufactured in South Korea, so I could even pretend I wasn’t implicated in Hyundai’s stateside child-labor situation. I loved going to IMSA races and rooting for the Elantra TCRs, seeing the ever-growing list of championships on the Herta trailers, filling out the dumb online surveys at Hyundai’s “activation” tents — How likely would I be to recommend one to a friend? 10/10 baby, all day! — and getting another cool t-shirt in exchange, the race car fading to black with the tagline on the back: Never just drive.
Okay, I want you to imagine that phrase echoing into the void as the screen goes dark and we now transition from the first part of our story to the second.
This would be the (possibly) worst day of my life part of the story. To set this up I need to explain that for the last twenty-plus years I’ve made my living as a touring and recording musician, playing bass in a cult band called the Mountain Goats. And while I live in western New York, the rest of the band are spread across the three corners of North Carolina’s Research Triangle, which means that more often than not, our tours started and ended from there. And because flying in this country has become an unreliable nightmare, my M.O. for ages had been to drive the eleven hours down to meet the bus at the beginning of tour, leave my car at our drummer’s house, and drive home at the end — something I never minded. Eleven hours of peaceful, uninterrupted solitude? Are you kidding? I looked forward to it, especially with my new ride making short work of Virginia’s various and delightful Blue Ridge Mountain passes.
Toward the end of our most recent tour I woke up one morning feeling like death. A Covid test confirmed my suspicion: I would be missing our last four shows. Instead I’d be staying behind in Charlottesville, Virginia, quarantined in a hotel room until such time as I could safely make my way home.
Not the first time I’d gotten Covid on tour! That had been toward the end of one of our first post-lockdown outings, in the fall of 2021, when three of us came up positive and I spent a week isolating in a hotel room in McLean before returning home to my family — Virginia being where I go to get Covid, apparently. My shameful secret at the time? It ruled. Recently vaxxed, a mild case, I passed the time ordering in really good food, watching movies, reading, listening to music, tracking the birds outside my ninth-floor window…I privately referred to it as my Covid retreat. Bliss.
This time was not bliss. This time was, in fact, the furthest thing from bliss. This was a week in the suicidal ideation chamber, a dark night of the soul punctuated by room service deliveries of Kleenex and Gatorade left outside my door. Physically I was a wreck: grievously ill and incapable of sleep, and with everything I put in my mouth tasting like absolute ass (even worse ass once I got the Paxlovid, which arrived too late to impart anything but its least pleasant side-effects), I couldn’t really eat either. Worse yet, though, was the mental funk, the short-circuited executive functioning, the proverbial brain fog from which, as the days went on, gradually began to emerge the contours of a profoundly distressing and potentially life-altering realization, to wit: I don’t think I can do this — emphatically points in every direction — anymore. You know that line about the body keeping score? This was the body holding up the judges’ cards, and every last one of them said the same thing. Game over, buddy.
I’d tested positive on Monday morning; by Friday I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to GTFO. I had to go home. Of course, I was in no condition to go anywhere, but that was beside the point. My situation had become untenable. I booked a rental car and plotted my escape.
The plan was a convoluted one, even under the best of circumstances. I’d get a rideshare from the hotel to the Charlottesville airport, where I’d pick up the rental. Drive four hours to the Raleigh-Durham airport, where’d I return it. Get another rideshare to my car, a half-hour away in Chapel Hill. And then get as much road under me as I could before finding a hotel for the night, thereby splitting the eleven hours I normally down in one gulp into chunks that might be more manageable given my shaky condition. Sounds reasonable, though, right? Doable, at least?
Friends, when I say that it was all I could do to get myself and my stuff — a suitcase, a backpack, a duffle bag and a garment bag — from my hotel room to the lobby, I mean it was literally all I could do. Forget about the rest of it. From that point on, I was fully beyond my operational capacity, reserves empty, borrowing against future returns that I don’t ever expect to realize. Honestly? I should’ve been in the fucking hospital. Saline drip in my arm, medicated to oblivion. That’s not how we do things here, though, so instead I sat down on the curb in the 90-degree Virginia morning swelter and waited for my ride.
Just to keep the losing streak going, what do you suppose Avis gave me at the airport? Of all the vehicles currently available from the rental-car roulette wheel, which one would most perfectly complement the abject despair of this moment? If you guessed Nissan Rogue, give yourself a prize, and please accept my condolences as well, because I have to imagine that you’ve been here before too.
I drove to RDU like a complete asshole. The one redeeming quality of a Nissan Rogue — any Nissan from the last twenty years really — is that it telegraphs to other drivers that you do not give a shit, a fact I used to full advantage in keeping the left lane clear in front of me. Made shockingly good time as a result. (It occurs to me now that this might be useful intel for future Cannonballers. Can you fit an AMG engine in a Rogue? Does AMG make a CVT?)
It was mid-afternoon by the time I was dropped off in our drummer’s gravel driveway, exhausted but grateful to have the hardest part behind me. I snapped a pic of our cars sitting next to each other and texted it to him; Hurricane Debby had come through and dumped a ton of rain a couple days earlier, and I’d had visions of showing up to downed trees or worse. Happily, the cars and his house appeared to have weathered the storm unscathed. I loaded up the Hyundai, checked the oil, got myself settled in and rolled out onto the street with a huge sigh of relief. Somehow, I’d done it. I was in my car, pointed toward home. All that was left now was to just drive. Easy. Just drive.
Sorry, what was that?
Barely a mile down the road the check engine light flashed and the car went into limp mode. Pedal-to-the-floor-going-nowhere limp mode.
Now, I’m generally a pretty profane person in my everyday life, and I tend to get more volubly profane when shit that’s supposed to work starts fucking up, for example. It is a measure of how utterly defeated I felt at this moment that the words that came out of my mouth were not a torrent of abuse, of pure, undistilled rage directed at everyone and no one at once, but something closer to a whimper: No. Please no. Please don’t do this to me. Not now. Not today.
I pulled off onto a side street and pulled my trusty $20 OBD-II reader out of the center console, a habit leftover from beater days. A formality; as with the Covid test, I already knew the answer. P1326 — the knock sensor. A known issue with these cars, one going back years on models throughout the Hyundai range. There are forums full of stories of cars throwing codes and going into limp mode after a trip through a car wash, or worse, a puddle; indeed, I’d known enough that when I took my car to get Waxoyled I specifically told the guy to be gentle when cleaning around the knock sensor beforehand, showed him exactly where it was and everything. For some reason the attachment where the sensor is connected is highly susceptible to moisture and will short out if water collects atop it. Mine had behaved itself until today; clearly it was waiting until the time was right to inflict maximum psychic damage and let me know that I’d bought the budget sport sedan equivalent of a fucking F-35.
Thrust suddenly from the anticipation of a zenned-out few hours of open road into mandatory problem-solving mode, my still-fogged brain struggled. What do I even do? I limped to the parking lot of a nearby antique store to get out of harm’s way. The car’s center screen proffered a button with instructions to call Hyundai service immediately. Not sure what that’s going to accomplish, but okay, sure. They dispatched a tow truck and told me to sit tight. In the meantime I scrolled through forum posts on my phone — can’t I just clear the code? There’s nothing actually wrong with the car, right? After a few unsuccessful attempts, I eventually managed to find the combination of ignition sequences and code-reader inputs that put out the engine light. Okay, sweet, back in business. I texted the tow driver back and told him his services were no longer required. Pulled triumphantly back onto the road and made it nearly half-way across the intersection when the light came back on and car went back into limp mode.
Now came the profanity.
When choosing a spot for your total nervous breakdown, there are a number of factors you’re going to want to consider. Fewer people around to witness it the better, of course. If you’re outdoors, maybe look for shade? Finally, it’s great if there’s some big heavy objects nearby that you can pick up and throw in a futile expression of your own helplessness, just to feel like you’re doing something — loose bricks or big pavers are ideal for this.
Happily for me there was an empty office park within coasting distance, with a parking lot perfectly suited for the occasion. You ever seen a grown-ass, middle-aged man completely lose his shit? It’s not pretty. But sometimes in life it takes a moment like this to shake you out of whatever mixture of complacency and denial you’ve been living in, and admit to yourself that it can’t continue, however much grief it’s going to cause you. In addiction circles they call it hitting bottom. In my case it meant calling back the tow truck driver.
By the time he showed up it was five o’clock, on a Saturday. The service department at the nearest dealership was closed, naturally, and wouldn’t open again until Monday morning. I briefly considered staying until then but quickly realized that if I had to spend another full day in a hotel room…well, let’s just say that wasn’t really an option. I left the car at the dealer, got yet another rideshare back out to an airport hotel, and flew home the next day.
To Hyundai’s credit, the car was fixed — knock sensor replaced — Monday morning, and the corporate people I spoke with were exceedingly helpful in arranging to have the car returned to me on their dime with assurances that I’d be reimbursed for all expenses incurred. And sure enough, a week later the car was back in my driveway.
I don’t even want to look at the damned thing.
Every bit of enthusiasm I ever had for it has been permanently extinguished. The t-shirts went in the trash. It’s so funny to me now, when I think about the a year and a half I spent meticulously changing my own oil, doing two-bucket hand washes, parking at the far end of the supermarket lot like a boomer with a new 911. What a chump! What an absolute fucking mark! It’s a Hyundai, bro!
Some of you reading this might be thinking well come on, man, it’s a car. Things happen. And you’re right, of course. Look, I’ve dailied decades-old Saabs for a large chunk of my life. There’s a reason I carry an OBD-II reader, even in a new car. I get it.
But my habit of using words like “budget” and “affordable” in relation to this car shouldn’t obscure the fact that, out the door, after taxes and destination and everything else, I paid nearly forty thousand dollars for this thing. We’ve been conditioned to think that’s not a lot, but to me at least, it’s a colossal sum. And yet they couldn’t spend the extra buck-fifty it would’ve cost for a weatherproof connector to get me home on a day when I’d all but killed myself just trying to find my way into in the driver’s seat. Never just drive, indeed!
Half of me wants to trade it for a Corolla — not a GR, just a Corolla, a middle finger to the entire idea of a cool car, the cheaper the better — but my kid has made it clear that while she’s fine with me quitting my rock-star job, getting rid of “her” Hyundai would mark a breach of father-daughter relations for which I’d never be forgiven. That, along with the certainty that I’d be screwing myself financially by selling at this point, are reason enough to keep it, at least for now.
After all this, would I still recommend an Elantra N to a friend?
Well, it depends. Just using it for track days, or to impress the twelve-year-olds in your life? Sure.
Does it rain where you live? Does it ever rain anyplace you might have reason to go? Might there ever be a situation where your sanity depends upon the car getting you from one place to another?
If so, I’d say the N in that case stands for Not on your fucking life.