Hyundai’s new Grand Creta is a superior SUV
Hyundai has added yet another SUV to its range in southern Africa – the Grand Creta – with two extra seats, a longer body and wheelbase, a long list of standard features and a superior ride that all come at a very competitive price. The muchanticipated SUV is expected in Namibian showrooms within the next three months.
The addition of the 7-seater Grand Creta, with different looks and design features than its 5-seater namesake, means that Hyundai now offers an even more comprehensive and one of the biggest ranges of sports utility and crossover vehicles in southern Africa.
With two specifications levels – Executive and Elite – for features and equipment and a combination of two different engines and gearboxes, the Grand Creta lineup of five derivatives offer a wide choice to customers.
“When you look at vehicle size, convenience and feature levels and pricing, the Grand Creta definitely had slot to fill in our vehicle offering,” said Stanley Anderson, sales and operations director at Hyundai Automotive South Africa.
“The original Creta has done excellent groundwork since its launch five years ago and prepared the way for its bigger sibling. The new Grand Creta has a spacious interior, and with its longer wheelbase offers an excellent ride quality with extremely low noise levels. Together with the impressive list of convenience and luxury features, the Grand Creta presents a motoring package for the bigger family that will be attractive to many customers that are buying in this segment,” said Anderson.
The interior of the Hyundai
Grand Creta immerses you in uncluttered design. Complete with a premium dual tone interiors and artificial leather seats in all derivatives, the carefully selected materials accentuate the aesthetic. An airy and cool ambience is created by the light-coloured seats.
The Elite versions displays information for the driver on a 10.2-inch Supervision cluster and starts the engine with a push button. Other Elite features and conveniences in the interior include a sun-roof, automatic climate control, blue ambient lighting strips and curtains for the rear windows that slide out of the door panels.
An infotainment system with an 8-inch touch screen and connectivity for Apple’s CarPlay or Android Auto forms part of standard luxury features across the range, as well as a steering wheel with multi-function buttons for the sound system and cruise control. Wireless charging in the centre console for smart phones is a standard feature across the range.
However, the outstanding interior feature are the two seats that fold out of the floor of the boot area to provide space for 7 occupants. With the rear seats down, the cargo area offers 1 670 cubic litres of space, and with all seatbacks up, 180 cubic litres of space behind the third row. The second-row seatbacks can be folded down in a 60:40 ratio, which enables several seating configurations – allowing inter alia the transportation of long objects.
Several active safety features combine with static safety equipment such as frontal and side airbags for the driver and front passenger and two curtain airbags. Among the SmartSense active safety features are front and rear Park Assist for the
Elite derivatives (front only for Executive level); Hill-Start Assist Control that prevents rollback; and an Electronic Stability Program (ESP) for all versions.
The Hyundai Grand Creta comes with two powertrains that include a 2-litre Smartstream MPi engine and a Smartstream 1,5-litre diesel CRDi engine with options of a 6-speed manual and a 6-speed automatic transmission.
In the entry-level Executive versions, the 2-litre naturally aspirated petrol engine is coupled with a 6-speed manual transmission and the 6-speed automatic gearbox, while the turbocharged 1,5-litre diesel engine is linked with the 6-speed automatic gearbox in an Executive and Elite derivative. There is also an Elite version with the 2-litre petrol engine and the automatic transmission.