Hyundai Tucson review

The Tucson is very competent and comfortable without being particularly memorable – which sounds like we’re damning it with faint praise, but represents a step forward for Hyundai (whose cars previously felt a bit flimsy and uninspiring) and puts the Tucson firmly in the mix in the family SUV segment.

The controls are mostly hassle free, including the drive selector (on auto models, of course) that sits behind the steering wheel in the bottom right. Drive modes can be toggled on the centre console and while the middle part of the dash has done away with aircon buttons, you still get a dedicated panel of touch sensitive controls for that. Not the most intuitive solution, but better than burying it all in a menu.

It’s a solid drive then? 

It’s sharp (enough), nimble (enough), and it welcomes a bit of enthusiasm if you want to get home quickly, while feeling more in its comfort zone when you don’t. The steering is surprisingly weighty, with some inertia in the response, yet very little friction. And the car reacts progressively in yaw and roll. All of which is a fancy way of saying it's easy to take a smooth, measured path that won't make anyone sick.

It's also stable on motorways, while on tighter twisty stuff or suburban roundabouts it feels quite heavy and deliberate in its movements: a solid crossover, not an agile car. You sit high which helps around town too. How successfully the Mud, Sand and Snow Terrain Modes work in the 4WD models, we’ve not had the chance to find out. We suspect most Tucson owners will never use them either.

The base petrol is the slowest (0-62mph takes 9.5s) and the least efficient (up to 39.8mpg), the full hybrid the fastest accelerating (7.8s) and mid-range for efficiency (up to 50.4mpg), while the plug-in hybrid splits the two for sprint speed (8.2s) but claims a handy 43 miles of e-range. Though worth noting that several of its rivals will manage double that. BiK tax is nine per cent (versus 30 elsewhere).

We’ve recently spent time in the updated full hybrid, which gets a 64bhp e-motor and a small 1.5kWh battery for electric driving around town. It offers more EV-only running than you might expect, with paddles behind the steering wheel allowing you to choose between three levels of regen (or fully off).

When the engine does kick in it does so almost unnoticeably, though the 1.6-litre 4cyl is surprisingly gruff when pushed hard. We also only saw 39mpg taking in a mix of town and motorway driving, which is no better than the base petrol claims.

Does it come with decent safety tech? 

A shout out for its vast swathe of driver assistance systems, too, which work away in the background better than rivals’ and are turned off with shorter, simpler button presses if you’d rather go without. Our favourite lives within the digital dial display, either the speedometer or rev counter displaying a high-res camera feed from the left or right of the car, depending on which indicator you’ve flicked.

It's blind spot monitoring plus, basically, and it’s fantastic for keeping your eyes closer to the road ahead while still keeping an eye out for rogue cyclists or mopeds that might be nipping past in an attempt to keep a bit more heat in the fried chicken they’re delivering. More cars could really do with them.