Hyundai Santa Fe Test drive since 2009 SUV

More powerful, faster, more

Hyundai Santa Fe is not expensive enough for you? Meet the IX55 for the price of one and a half times higher you will receive a unique chance to study from and to, what it is: the mysterious and mysterious premium segment in Korean.
The Hyundai IX55 was prepared primarily for the America market, only there it was named not a couple of Latin letters and numbers, but bears the name of one of the warm states of Mexico Veracruz. Just like ours, the model is offered with the only possible engine and only with an automatic box.
The platform for the novelty was an elongated cart from the closest relative of Santa Fe; From her, the model adopted the geometry of pendants, Mac Farson in front and multi -link behind.
IX55 design turned out to be controversial. Americans love such intricate, soaped forms, but it may seem to the European contemplator that the stylists were tormented while they collected so many different lines, details, elements
It turned out very much in the east: pompous and for an amateur. There is no single style at all, but the critic should simply be crushed by the massive forms of a steep body.
A complete idyll is observed in the cabin (in the Korean sense, this is when the black-gray interior is diluted with several strokes of pseudocarbon and aluminum pseudo). The plastic itself is high -quality, soft to the touch, and the panels are not fitted. The architecture of the front panel is much more restrained than the exterior
Here, much resembles Santa Fe! The same powerful protruding admixture of the middle console, the same classic dials of instruments, poisonous blue backlighting randomly scattered along the panel of meager screen
Against the background of advanced competitors, the Hyundai IX55 looks like a bore, a boring middle peasant. Is there really no other colors in Korea other than gray, black and blue? There is not enough and a large screens of a multimedia system for many classmates its presence is the norm.
The premium application requires greater model from the new model than Santa Fe, the efforts to ensure comfort. All adjustments, including the steering wheel, are electrified in IX55. Only now it was not possible to get a job comfortable. The base of the steering column is highly located, and if it is lowered, the massive steering wheel will block the upper scale of the devices. And on the contrary: you will lift yourself as a driver of Ikarus.
Maybe these nit -picking with an eye on the price? After all, the ergonomics of Hyundai Santa Fe did not cause any special complaints, and in the IX55 the interior was built. Only now the places behind the wheel are more width and above the head
Although inconvenience has objective reasons. The front chair pleases with the huge amplitude of the microlift, but it is longing that it moves very limitedly a high driver here, twisting. At the same time, there is enough space behind with a margin of at least 7-10 cm, especially with the rear sofa. It is hoped that the Hyundai IX55 basketball players will not be seduced, or they will only ride from behind.
The second row is not just spacious, but really comfortable. Here is a sofa pillow with heated, and a separate climate control, and powerful blowing deflectors in the middle rack and roof and, under the floor in the trunk, the third row of seats is also hidden. Even if it is laid out, 184 liters of volume for a pair of bags will remain in the bowels of the trunk. With two rows of luggage chairs, almost 600 liters are allotted.
The tall body demanded a different filling before the test managers of the salon told us to renounce the memories of Santa Fe, finding the very attempt to compare both monstrous models. A new motor, a more advanced gearbox, all this should bring IX55 to a premium level without reservation!
Let's start with the box. A six -speed automatic in urban unrest that is 20 drops of Corvalola. Its work is so smooth that it is very difficult to crush in the flow of continuous acceleration-renewal. Only now you will press the accelerator stronger, and the IX55 will remain a lazy awkward.
Two hundred and sixty-four horses hidden in the bowels of a 3.8-liter six, do not rush to spin the wheels shod in slippery Korean tires. To achieve the declared 8.3 C to hundreds, you need to extremely sharply handle the gas pedal. She does not perceive the car smoothly floating on the roadway, slowly accelerating. Perhaps this is the premium in Korean: it is difficult to manage the dynamics, but the numbers in the registration of it are unlikely to call anyone unworthy.
And for the hundredth time about Santa Fe: he, with his 187 l. p., in motion and noisier, and not so dynamic, but you get used to the most quick machine gun for minutes, and the response to the gas is alive and predictable. Maybe in all -wheel drive IX55 is hidden the root of the premium? But on slippery rubber, even with virtual locks, you can get into a trap in the first snowdrift, which we did well and did
Such a result. Above all the components of the controversial, but self -sufficient, in general, design, interior and technical filling of the new crossover, the spirit of the Santa Fe model is hiding. Yes, IX55 came out more powerful, faster, more, but as if a sponge absorbed all its advantages and disadvantages. And if the first, undoubtedly, became more, then the latter against the backdrop of an immodest price are striking quite strongly.

Author: Alexander Mikhailov
Photo: Roman Ostanin

The car is provided for the Dakar test by the official Hyundai dealer.

 
 
 

A source: Wheel magazine [April 2009]