Hyundai Santa Fe
New from £46,530 / £470 p/m
Is the Hyundai Santa Fe SUV a good car?
Read our expert review
Words by: Mark Nichol
"The 2024 Hyundai Santa Fe is absolutely massive. It’s so massive that when you flatten all five of its rear seats, you can put a double mattress in there and sleep in it. But it’s quite easy to make a massive car. It’s not so easy making a luxurious one, especially if you’re Hyundai and you need to charge a reasonable price for it. But, here we are. The 2024 Santa Fe is a genuine Land Rover Discovery alternative that’s very nearly as good in every way – and probably much more reliable – but which undercuts it by near-enough £20,000. It’s quite the transformation for a model that started life more than two decades ago as a quite ugly, quite basic 4x4. If you can live with the 'brick with lights' looks (they grow on you, honestly), the Santa Fe is one of the best-value seven-seat family cars this side of a Skoda Kodiaq. Or two-and-a-half Dacia Joggers."
Read the review by category
Running costs for a Hyundai Santa Fe
3/5
There are two engine options to choose from: a hybrid and a plug-in hybrid (PHEV). The former offers 41mpg and the latter 166mpg, but the PHEV commands a premium of around £5,000. In our experience with both options over a couple of days, efficiency in the mid-to-high 30s is what you can expect (PHEVs always perform unrealistically well in the WLTP fuel efficiency test). But the PHEV’s 54-mile electric-only range could dramatically lower your fuel costs if your daily commute is short and you regularly charge the battery. You will also, of course, save a hefty amount in tax with the PHEV if you’re acquiring it as a company car. Generally though, this is a big car with big car running costs (it’s in insurance group 36 on the 1-50 scale), while being far from unreasonable.
Reliability of a Hyundai Santa Fe
4/5
The 2024 Santa Fe is a brand-new model so there’s no reliability data to lean on, but we can confidently predict that reliability will be well above average. For starters, its building blocks are basically the same ones used in a number of Hyundai and Kia models, including the current Kia Sportage and Sorento, and the outgoing Hyundai Santa Fe. Those cars have proven very reliable, and Hyundai and Kia often feature in the upper echelons of brand reliability surveys. For peace of mind, the Santa Fe comes with a five-year, unlimited mileage warranty – one of the best in the industry.
Safety for a Hyundai Santa Fe
4/5
There are three trim levels to choose from: Premium, Ultimate and Calligraphy - the last of those presumably because Calligraphy is the fanciest of pastimes, and definitely not because it evokes a Range Rover Autobiography. All are specced to the hilt, including a suite of highly reassuring standard safety features. It includes multiple airbags, a reversing camera, automatic emergency braking, blind spot collision avoidance, lane-keeping assist, and a cruise control system that reads both the traffic ahead and the road’s speed limit and adjusts automatically. There’s little doubt that when Euro NCAP tests the Santa Fe it’ll receive five stars, but we’ve knocked a star off because some safety features only appear higher up the trim hierarchy. A more sophisticated forward collision avoidance system, for example, which provides evasive steering if you’re about to hit a cyclist or an oncoming vehicle. And a surround-view monitor camera. Leaving the most sophisticated safety systems to upper-level cars is an industry-standard thing to do, but still, it always sits a bit uncomfortably when more money buys more safety.
How comfortable is the Hyundai Santa Fe
5/5
Very. In most ways the Santa Fe has the feel of a proper luxury car. The steering wheel is thick and padded, and the steering feel itself is effortlessly light. The driver’s seat has masses of space around it and sits you taller than a Crufts-winning Great Dane, and both the ride and refinement are top-notch. It rolls over the road with a quiet sophistication, with very little of the noise of the outside world breaking the seal of the cabin. The engine is the only minor letdown in context. Accelerate hard in either the hybrid or the PHEV, and the vaguely gruff character of the 1.6 turbo petrol engine exposes the Santa Fe as a mid-level SUV. The cabin ambience is quite colour dependent too; the busy dashboard design looks and feels much better in a light colour than in a dark one. Regardless, the amount of space afforded to middle-row rear passengers, combined with the soft ride quality, makes this a brilliant passenger car for adults or kids. There’s even a six-seat option with two full-sized chairs in the middle. And although, as usual, the rearmost seats are on the tight side for people with limbs, the sheer scale and boxiness of the Santa Fe means it’s kinder to the passengers in sears six and seven than most large SUVs. It follows that the boot is huge in any configuration, good enough for a weekly shop even with the rearmost seats in place. Hyundai has deliberately given the car an enormous rear hole too, with a gaping tailgate made specifically for swallowing massive objects.
Features of the Hyundai Santa Fe
4/5
There aren’t really many truly ‘basic’ cars left – steel wheels, manual windows and optional air con are things of the past – but in the Santa Fe’s case, the base-level car really is Premium by name and nature. The curved twin-screen display is standard (curved so you can reach the touch-sensitive part of it without leaning forward), and all cars come with wireless smartphone mirroring, wireless phone charging, navigation, dual-zone climate control, leather seats, a heated steering wheel, heated front seats, keyless entry and start, an electrically powered tailgate… lots, basically. And there are more spaces for oddments than the back wall at Collectables. Whether it’s worth upgrading to an Ultimate or Calligraphy car depends on how you feel about stuff like a Bose stereo (worth it, we think), heated rear seats, an extra wireless phone charger, smart remote parking with the key fob (brilliant for pranking unsuspecting people), and a clever exterior handle on the C-Pillar that makes it easier to climb up onto the roof. Only the reserved safety stuff prevents the Santa Fe from getting a five-star score for its feature-richness.
Power for a Hyundai Santa Fe
4/5
In every way the Santa Fe feels like a car that should have a big six-cylinder petrol engine. The sort of engine you can still find in an Audi or Mercedes-Benz or Land Rover. The sort of engine that’s powerful and quick and sounds ‘executive’ at higher revs. As it is, the Santa Fe’s two hybrid options – one of them a plug-in with a 54-mile electric range – are basically adequate. Both use a 1.6-litre turbo engine (yep, in a car this big) and electrical assistance, with the hybrid pushing out 215 horsepower and the PHEV 253. Four-wheel drive is optional in the hybrid and standard fit with the PHEV, and both get a six-speed automatic – an impressive one at that, quick-witted and unobtrusive with its gear changes. As we’ve alluded to already, unless you’re in a position to use the electric-only range of the PHEV for most of your daily driving, we’d recommend the standard hybrid with two-wheel drive. There’s no real performance difference (it takes any Santa Fe roughly ten seconds to reach 62mph), nor any meaningful traction difference for the banal day-to-day driving you’re likely to be doing in this most of the time.
Lease deals
These deals are based on terms of 8,000 miles, for a 36 month lease with a 6 months initial payment.
£582.02
Monthly payment
£3,492.12
Initial payment
£611.63
Monthly payment
£3,669.78
Initial payment
£580.60
Monthly payment
£3,483.60
Initial payment
£650.08
Monthly payment
£3,900.48
Initial payment
Standard equipment
Expect the following equipment on your Hyundai Santa Fe SUV. This may vary between trim levels.
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Hyundai Santa Fe SUV (2018 - 2020) review
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