Specced-up Santa Fe hits market
There’s an all-new Santa Fe in town: the fourth generation of Hyundai’s big-selling seven-seat SUV.
Santa Fe brings the choice of the very familiar 2.4-litre petrol engine or the 2.2-litre turbo diesel. The latter is the star performer, with 200Nm more torque than the petrol and an extra two gears from its new eight-speed transmission.
The AWD system is also new: called HTrac, it’s more sophisticated than the previous model’s and operates with a different torque split depending on drive mode.
Santa Fe is the showcase for the very latest technology the Korean giant has to offer. It introduces to the brand Blind Spot Collision Avoidance, Rear Cross Traffic Collision Avoidance, Leading Vehicle Departure Alert, Safety Exit Assist, Rear Occupant Alert (it’ll remind you via mobile phone that you’ve left a child or animal in the car) and a new ‘‘live’’ Auto Link Premium service, which can link your phone to a SIM card embedded in the vehicle.
Both entry and Elite models have a Bluetooth-only Auto Link setup driven from your mobile phone. But if you want to go full tech, you can add Premium for just $299 for remote features, more comprehensive vehicle management, lots of driving history data, the ability to ‘‘geo-fence’’ the car if somebody else is using it, customer-relations stuff such as service bookings and direct chat via Facebook Messenger with Hyundai New Zealand.