Hyundai Tucson 2.0 CRTD Car Review

Facts At A Glance
Car: Hyundai Tucson 2.0-litre CRTD
Prices: £16,350 - £18,310 – on the road
Insurance Group: 11
Emissions: 187g/km
Performance: 0-60mph 13.8s / Max Speed 104mph
Fuel Consumption: (Combined) 40.4mpg
Safety: Twin front airbags, ABS
Dimensions: Length/Width/Heightmm 4325/1830/1730mm

HYUNDAI’S HOT TAMALE?

Our Rating: 6.3 / 10

Hyundai’s South West theme continues with the Tucson 2.0 CRTD, a small 4x4 with a reasonable price tag. Andy Enright reports

It’s little wonder that Hyundai are pouring their budget into producing accessible, friendly 4x4s like the Tucson and the Santa Fe. Vehicles like these are stealing sales from the traditional family saloon/hatch and are quite the hot ticket. The other major growth area is in diesel car sales. Combine a fresh-faced compact 4x4 with a modern diesel engine and you’d be virtually guaranteed a sales hit, especially if it was backed up by bargain pricing right? Well, no. This is a market that’s almost overwhelmingly badge conscious and despite their ‘a car first, a badge second’ promotional message, Hyundai have to face this fact in their quest for sales.

The badge is the first issue. The second is the Hyundai’s rather inoffensive nature. Despite doing nothing particularly badly, the Tucson excels in no particular area either, doing the sort of blandly competent job that Honda were making their own with the Mk 1 CR-V years ago. The market has evolved significantly since then and products have differentiated themselves into various niches from the sporty Toyota RAV-4, the capable Nissan X-TRAIL and the aspirational Land Rover Freelander. The tough guy Subaru Forester, the sleek Mitsubishi Outlander and the bargain basement Kia Sportage have all eked out an existence. The Tucson seems to have little to mark it out to buyers, although today’s model is the beneficiary of a mild facelift and is also available in two-wheel-drive guise.

Still, one thing Hyundai have done well – unlike many Asian rivals like Subaru, Mitsubishi and Honda – is diesel engine development and the 2.0-litre CRTD powerplant fitted to the Tucson is a rugged yet modern installation developing 148bhp. The engine seems to lack the midrange shove of most common-rail diesels, almost as if its turbocharger was bleeding away boost, but the flipside of this is a very pleasant linearity of feel that makes it an easy engine to live with day in, day out.

A combined fuel economy figure of 40.4mpg is very respectable going for such a spacious vehicle and even around town the Tucson will see over 30mpg. The diesel is moderately capable off road, although anything too arduous will betray its comparative lack of wheel articulation. Even over modest obstacles, the Tucson is prone to lifting a wheel and the four wheel drive system isn’t quite clever enough to realise when one wheel is six inches off the ground and divert drive to the other wheel. Instead it uses a more rudimentary ‘torque on demand’ system that keeps the Tucson in front wheel drive up until that moment when the front wheels’ start slipping. It then transfers a percentage of drive to the rear wheels. Unfortunately it seems a little dull witted when performing this task, allowing the car to sit spinning its front wheels impotently for a few seconds before deciding to switch to all wheel drive. A far better option is to manually switch the system to all-wheel drive (operable at speeds of up to 19mph) via a dash mounted button. If you can’t be bothered with all that and don’t need 4WD anyway, there’s the option of going for the 2WD model and saving yourself around £1,000.

In order to win ‘conquest sales’ from other manufacturers, the Tucson needs to offer something demonstrably different and this is where it could struggle. It rides on a modified Hyundai Elantra chassis and shares this with Kia’s latest Sportage, a car that has been pitched to undercut it significantly on price. If you’re looking for a compact 4x4 where price is everything, the Tucson isn’t it. What it does represent is a test of how far Hyundai’s stronger brand image can be teased. Exactly how much more are British buyers prepared to pay for a Hyundai over sister company Kia?

The hardware looks enticing enough in a generic sort of way. The styling looks like a scaled down Santa Fe but without the rather odd scalloped sides that, until BMW started adopting the look, made the car look as if