Quote Originally Posted by roycruz View Post
Would appreciate recommendations for a sub compact with focus on the following:

1, good interior and trunk space, a must for us coz we carry a lot of baggage when traveling between Makati and Lucena
2. good fuel consumption, not necessarily the best
3. good at overtaking - a must on provincial drives
4. preferably modern looks; something we can show off :-)
5, must be automatic

We can probably stretch our budget to 840k.

We're almost done paying for our 2008 honda city 1.3 at and is now looking for a new car. Never realized it would be difficult though.

Our initial choice was the hyundai accent but we were discouraged by friends who suggested it has lower quality. This was aggravated by comments on the net on the knocking issue. Has this really been fixed or not?

Our next choice was the chevy sonic which we checked out at the showroom but didn't have a chance to test drive (it was past 5pm) and we are in Lucena on weekends. My wife and I really love its features and she was disappointed last night when I told her that it is very slow when overtaking from what I read. This is a challenge on provincial highways where it is common to have slow tricycles or trucks in front of you. A friend suggested disabling overdrive when overtaking. What's that? Should we just shift to manual mode when overtaking?

Up next is the 1.3 city whose looks and features we didn't find as enticing as compared to the sonic. Well we actually haven't found an affordable car as good on paper as the sonic though we may have no choice but to accept that fact. Unfortunately I read comments last night that the newer city has higher fuel consumption than our 2008 city. Arg!

So now we're back to square one. Any suggestions please :-)
Subcompact with a good interior, trunk space and powerful engine? Well there are only two choices that I can think of. City 1.5 at 836k or Accent 1.6GLS at 828k. Test drive or at least visit both at the showroom to get a better feel of both cars. The Accent is quite nice, especially the top of the line variant which is quite generously spec'd. The knocking issue plagues the 1.4L variants, not the 1.6. And even that is now solved with an ECU update.

Disabling overdrive when overtaking is OK, though I've never had the occasion to do it as it was never needed. This feature disables the top gear which then makes the tranny shift more aggressively and keeps the engine speed at high rpms giving better performance in overtaking. A/T's with manual mode do not have this function as that is pretty much what the manual mode is for.

Another alternative you may want to consider is the Elantra 1.6A/T at 888k. You add slightly more but get an award winning car of a higher class that gives decent gas mileage and excellent performance.