REMOTE DIAL UP
SEVEN DRIVE MODES; HOW MANY WILL YOU USE?
HYUNDAI PALISADE HIGHLANDER Price as tested $75,000 This month 324km @ 10.0L/100km Total 2798km @ 10.5L/100km
MY no-longer-teenage daughter jumped in the front passenger seat of the Palisade the other day, and cast her eye around the vast cabin as she paired her phone to the multimedia system with the ruthless, intuitive efficiency only a Gen Z can.
Once I’d convinced her to play some old-school hip-hop instead of her nu-school computer-generated ear floss, we settled in for the short drive to lunch.
In a rare moment of lifting her eyes from her phone, she spotted the drive mode selector and asked a reasonable question: “Hey dad, what does this thing do?”
I sensed this was my big moment to impress her with my extensive knowledge of the Palisade’s seven different drive modes, and go into excruciating detail as to how each one is tailored for specific conditions, and how there are seven wondrously unique blends of throttle mapping, transmission calibration, EPAS assistance, and front-to-rear torque splits to enhance traction in even the most challenging conditions.
I didn’t, of course, because I would have bored her so rigid I would have had to carry her out of the car like a fence post. So I kept it simple: “Not as much as you may expect, honey.”
Which is a very abridged version of my experimentation of the drive modes, that, I must concede, hasn’t been as comprehensive as I’d have liked due to lock-down restrictions. Oh, and the perplexing absence of mud, sand and snow on the commute within my 10km-restriction zone.
I’ll get further into the off-road stuff in a moment, but let’s first take a deeper dig at the four on-road modes: Eco, Comfort, Smart, and Sport. Having experimented with all of them, I struggle to notice any tangible difference between Smart and Comfort, even if the Palisade’s technical info assures me there is. The difference between Eco and those two is also pretty subtle: a slightly softer throttle response and more languid, less eager calibration for the eightspeed auto, which becomes a bit too snoozy for my taste. I failed to record any economy advantage in Eco, but that’s probably down to my slight
impatience with the transmission in this mode, where I find myself manually plucking the paddles to get the desired ratio and engine response. Your results may differ if you can softpedal the car in the manner in which Eco pretty much insists.
Which isn’t to suggest that I hoof the Palisade with a leaden right foot in my normal daily driving. I simply can’t because most of my neighbourhood is a 40km/h zone, and the main roads in my LGA are infested with both fixed cameras and mobile speed cameras devoid of warning signage. Which is part of the reason I tried Sport mode once, and haven’t returned to it since. Yes, it makes the transmission usefully more eager to kick down with the slightest throttle prod, but the flipside is that it holds the shorter ratio long after your brief sporting moment has passed, so you revert to paddles to make an upshift to quieten the engine down and avoid a public flogging for exceeding the speed limit by 10km/h. Sport also adds weight to the steering, which, to me, at least, just makes it heavier and less feelsome, not more sporting. And don’t forget the Palisade is on passive dampers, so there’s no firming of the chassis tune when Sport is selected.
As for the off-road modes? Well, I can attest that selecting Sand on a dirt track did bring a noticeable and useful increase in rearward torque bias, which instantly gave the Palisade a much more planted and tractionenhanced dynamic character. But it’s not a instant ticket to oppo-lock rallycross nirvana. You need to switch off the ESC to make the thing move around to any meaningful degree, and the safety net remains there in the background and will intervene anyway if you try to get too sideways. As for Mud and Snow, I can’t pass judgment, but I suspect the difference between them in the real world, on those two surfaces, would be marginal, and the Palisade’s slippery-surface behaviour would be more greatly affected by tyre choice and pressure.
You can see where I’m going with this. I’m not alone in my theory that automotive marketing departments probably have more influence on the inclusion of multiple driving modes than the powertrain bosses.
If it came to the crunch, I suspect the Palisade really would lose little by having just two modes: onroad and off-road. But that sort of reasoning is also why I’ll never land a job in marketing.