Hyundai Santa Fe (2022) review Car News

Hyundai’s response, which Autocar’s test drive microscope is focusing on this week, seems broadly “steady as it goes.” The fourth-generation Santa Fe gets a smarter look, a stiffer and lighter chassis, and new suspension and drivetrain systems. And, although we will test it with the well-known 2.2-litre four-cylinder diesel engine, it will also be the first car in its lineage to stray from diesel, with Hyundai preparing to introduce the petrol-electric hybrid and the plug-in hybrid. mid-term releases.

Design and styling of the Hyundai Santa Fe

The success of the Santa Fe in the UK market is, to a large extent, based on the metal’s value for money. And so, while it was already one of the biggest SUVs you could spend over £30,000 on, the fact that it’s just a bit bigger probably won’t hurt its sales potential.

At 4770mm in length, the car now sits inches short of a BMW X5 and almost exactly shares the difference between a Land Rover Discovery and a Discovery Sport in busy curbside terrain. And yet, as you can imagine, the Santa Fe is far from so precisely dividing the difference between these two Land Rovers on price. More information on this in due course.

The car’s underbody construction remains an all-steel unibody, although it contains a greater proportion of hot-stamped high-strength steel than any other Hyundai. The body is independently suspended, via struts at the front and multiple links at the rear, above which you’ll find steel coil springs and a damping system that provides a self-leveling feature for all UK market specifications.

All-wheel drive isn’t standard on all trims either; and, what’s more, it’s the first time Hyundai UK has offered a front-wheel-drive Santa Fe, though not the first time the car has been without rear driveshafts in the overall sense. There is, for now, just one engine on offer: a redesigned version of Hyundai’s 2199cc four-cylinder CRDi turbodiesel engine from Hyundai’s R family, which mounts transversely under the hood and produces 197bhp and 325 lb-ft.

Either way, that’s precisely what the outgoing Santa Fe had – although Hyundai engineers may have considered it a good result to replicate those outputs on an engine that required revised combustion control, internal friction reduced, a particulate trap, a selective catalytic reduction system and a lean NOx trap to meet current Euro 6d-TEMP emissions requirements.