Hello,
I will buy a 2013 Elantra car soon (by the end of July). I have three assumptions here
I would forget about the exact date of manufacture of a car. In the bad old days US manufactured cars varied in quality by day of week (Monday am, Friday pm) as well as the very first samples of a NEW model.
Today’'s manufacturing quality is much more uniform, and Hyundai build quality is now better than most.
The only difference now is that a new model may have more problems than a model in production for several years. I have a 2007 Corolla which had been in production for 4 years when I bought it. After more than 6 years of driving I have yet to have a repair.
You are wasting your time trying to differentiate between dates of manufacture. It is completely irrelevant. When buying new tires or batteries, the date of manufacture is important.
One of my concerns is the long waiting period at dealer. In the city I live most of the cars in dealers are in open lot and it snowed crazy lazy Winter. Hypothetically, assume two cars: Car-1 was produced in November and arrived to dealer in December. Car-2 was produced in April and arrived to dealer in May. Is there a difference in Car-1 and Car-2 (assuming they are identical models)? Well, may be my question is non-sense.
On a new car, they should show you the invoice with the date on it or find the build sheet in the car somewhere. The last few digits of the VIN is a sequential production number so the higher the number the newer the car. Also you can look at the date codes on the tires to see when they were made. Really its just not something I ever worried about and actually when we bought the last two cars, never even saw it until the salesman brought it around for delivery. Only around for a couple months. Most stuff moves pretty fast.
While you probably can’t determine the exact manufacturing date, you can easily find out the month & year in which it was manufactured, as well as the country where it was built.
Just open the driver’s door, and look for a label that is affixed somewhere in the door jamb area.
One light-colored label will have the information relating to tire inflation, and the other label–which is usually black with light lettering–will have the mfr’s name, the month & year of manufacture, information on the vehicle’s gross weight, the VIN, and certification that it met all safety standards that were in existence on the date of manufacture.
On the bottom of the label is a bar code that the dealership can scan in order to get more information about the car if they need to repair it.
The question is NOT nonsense at all. You never know until you ask. And in this case you have a point of some legitimacy. Manufacturers do make changes during a model year, sometimes to correct a defect that’s discovered, and thus your logic is quite sound.
This is the format Toyota uses, and Hyundae’s may be similar. The serial number can, with the dealer’s assistance, be looked up to determine exactly when the vehicle was built.
http://tijil.org/Scion_Docs/t2006vint.pdf
Having seen the release of new products for production, it is likely that more recent output is better. Manufacturing engineers and product design engineers are always searching for ways to make things better and cheaper or at least cheaper without sacrificing the desired level of quality. A car is a large collection of opportunities to find ways to do things better and cheaper. Occasionally it happens that a product improvement isn’t and a change to a less expensive production method turns out to be an unintended quality reduction but in spite of these, I’d go for the later production.
@moskaynak As we say, you are trying to separate fly specs from black pepper. Stop worrying and get the best deal you can. A friend of mine once bought a brand new big Oldsmobile 98 for 60% of the list price. This was in a small town and there were no customers for this car. When the new models arrived he got a huge discount on the car which he happily drove for 9 years.
In the case of the Hyundai Elantras, the Touring model was not selling well and you could get a real deal on one now.
I would go for a newer car. I once bought a Taurus that had been on a dealer’s lot for about 9 months. Shortly after buying it, the A/C started acting up. They said it needed new seals in the compressor. I figured the rubber seals dried up from lack of lubrication since it was infrequently started.
I figured the rubber seals dried up from lack of lubrication since it was infrequently started.
A/C compressors don’t have rubber seals…They are ceramic…
The hose connections still have o-rings, made of rubber.
On the sticker with the tire info, you should also find the car’s info like VIN # and date of manufacture like 04/12 for April of 2012. Getting the day of the month might be harder to figure out, but month and year is posted clearly on all cars. Just find the tire info sticker, often on a door jam.
^
Gee, I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Oh, that’s right–I did.
Yesterday…
;-))