2011 Hyundai Santa Fe

After a successful stint in the small car and premium hatch market in India, Hyundai came out with its Crossover SUV, the Santa Fe recently. Our first impressions about the car gave you a fair idea as to what the car is capable of and what it lacks. The Santa Fe makes for a great urban SUV and comes in both 2WD as well as 4WD variants. Hyundai plays it safe and leaves it upon the buyers to choose from both the variants. We drove the 4WD version and found out how different this car was from the others in the segment.

Hyundai India Motor Ltd. has had a fairly successful run with its small cars since the late nineties with the Santro doing the trick for Hyundai in India. Then came the Accent which also worked wonders in the executive sedan segment and then came the blitz of the i-cars – the i10 and the i20 which are really working wonders for this South Korean automobile giant in India. However larger and more expensive automobiles from the Hyundai stable, save for the first generation very-Jag looking Sonata in India, haven’t done as well as the company had hoped. Cars like the Elantra (especially the CRDi) were excellent, feature packed cars at a VFM price point but just didn’t grab the market’s fancy. Even today, the Sonata Transform CRDi Automatic is rich with features and is an excellent VFM overall package, but just doesn’t sell in numbers since buyers in this segment tend to be very brand conscious more than anything else.