Music is the last thing on my mind right now. Lined with shaggy palm trees (could be coconut trees, for all I know), a sun hellbent on setting everything on fire and humidity that feels like walking into a wall, the East Coast Road connecting Chennai and Pondicherry is hardly a pleasing place to be on. Making things worse is the traffic.

It seems as if the natives can’t take the heat anymore and are driving like mad, ostensibly to get as far away from the place as possible. And through all this, our Sonata wafts along, unmindful of all the chaos around it. And that sums up what Hyundai’s latest D-segmenter is all about, and I could end it at that. However, life isn’t as simple and I’m afraid you’ll have to bear with me for a bit.

Thermometers might be melting outside, but inside the Sonata, it takes no time for the AC to give you an accurate idea of what Eskimos feel like in their homeland. It cools us down enough to venture out and appreciate the fact that the sun quite flatters the new gleaming ‘fluidic’ lines that this sixth-gen Sonata sports. The roof has a distinct coupé-like swoop to it, while the light-catcher lines catch it better than some solar panels in existence.