Package tour: 3,000 miles around New Zealand in the new Hyundai Santa Fe

On the first day I’m five metres off the deck picking Trevor Kalkhoven’s ripening avocados. On the last I’m shaking hands with Steve Muilwyk at Stirling Point looking out towards Antarctica. In between I’ve covered 3,099 miles around New Zealand in one of the lengthiest, most varied and strenuous roadtrips in Top Gear history. Its aim? To deliver magazines to the 21 New Zealanders who subscribe to the British magazine. Oh, and test the new Hyundai Santa Fe to the limit.

Welcome then to the Top Gear postal service, motto: “going postal since 2024.” Even by the standards of our dear own Royal Mail, the TG Post isn’t an efficient service, given we have just one vehicle, one driver and 21 packages to deliver around an area considerably larger than the British Isles. But on the plus side Fujitsu has been nowhere near the planning of this.

The Santa Fe’s colossal 628-litre boot is untroubled by a box containing special issue magazines, Stig keyrings, pens, bags, T-shirts and other bits that our worldwide subscribers don’t normally have access to. First stop is the main NZ Post depot on the outskirts of Auckland to learn how to convince people to sign for suspicious packages. Not really, I’m here to see its hydrogen truck.

As we’ll find across New Zealand, the sustainability pressure is on. Everyone from the national postal service to adventure firms running bungee jumps is being told to decarbonise its vehicle. For NZ Post that means trialling a Hyundai Xcient fuel cell truck. It’s been a big hit, covering over 60,000 miles in two years and as the infrastructure has improved the refuelling time to put 31kg of hydrogen on board has dropped from seven hours to 10 minutes. I go for a ride and discover it’s smooth, quiet and, unladen, has a surprisingly punchy turn of pace. No problem with parcel delivery here.

Photography: Rowan Horncastle

We’re used to Hyundai being at the cutting edge of tech now, often as not mating that with bold, imaginative design (see Ioniqs 5 and 6). But with the Santa Fe, design leads. Underneath it’s ‘just’ a hybrid. You can choose between regular or plug-in, in both cases the electric is supplementary to a 1.6-litre 148bhp turbocharged 4cyl. Not a lot of engine to push along 1,965kg of family SUV. This one’s the milder of the two, sporting a tiny 1.4kWh battery that feeds a 64bhp electric motor and delivers less than a mile of clean, silent range.

In New Zealand it’s probably the one to have. Despite the pressure, electric isn’t catching on out here. EVs and PHEVs accounted for just 14 per cent of the market in 2023, and in 2024 it dropped to five. The problem is a small population, much of it rural, across a large area.

It’s one we’re facing too. Just not on day one, which sees me heading north from Auckland into dense subscriber territory: five to visit, the most northerly of whom, near Whangārei, is Trevor Kalkhoven. Probably one of our longest term subscribers anywhere, he’s recently celebrated 25 years of having the mag sent to New Zealand. Giving him three more and a Stig keyring feels rather inadequate. Especially since he invites us in for coffee and sends us on our way an hour later with the Santa Fe’s nifty front and rear hinged centre bin stuffed full of his avocados.

Inevitably our nonstop headlong dash around New Zealand meant we couldn’t meet every subscriber, and not everyone wanted to appear on camera. Some people we struggled to contact at all (many assumed it was a scam when we first got in touch), others got mag drops in their postboxes. But then in Silverdale we dropped in on Justan Wong and his collection of impressively well thumbed Top Gear mags, many of which were older than he is.

Watch this one – he’s so eager to be a car designer he’s doing a distance learning course in Germany from his home half a world away. Back into Auckland that evening we drop in on Derek and Richard Jones (son Richard subscribes for his dad for Christmas each year) and among his Aston Martins and McLaren, get a reminder of home.

The following day we continue our journey south, with mag drops for drift superstar ‘Mad’ Mike Whiddett and, unbeknownst to each other, our two closest subscribers, living within a few hundred metres of each other in Cambridge. A diversion north takes me to John and Nicole Robinson in Tauranga via Hobbiton where I am cruelly denied the opportunity to post a mag through Bilbo’s letterbox.

New Zealand starts low. A gentle pulse of hills, rivers and vegetation has characterised the landscape thus far. Somehow similar to the UK, somehow different. Rounded hills sweep and sway, the earth soft, rich and easily eroded by powerful water. In places this bucolic landscape peels back to reveal its volcanic undercurrents. Central to Maori culture, Rotorua and Taupō bathe in their own steam baths – mud bubbles, ferns tremble, rocks emerge, the land hardens. This is Tongariro, the high barren plateau dominated by a core of idling volcanoes, their summits sacred to the Maori.

It snows on the flanks of Ruapehu. It’s the first opportunity I have to exercise the Santa Fe and the four wheel drive makes a decent fist of masking the summer tyres’ deficiencies – it’s biased to the front but shifts power around smoothly. It’s spring here, the temperature rises, snow melts, grip returns, but body roll doesn’t. The Santa Fe holds itself together well in a corner, the steering is accurate, the nose tacks itself to a line.

It’s been a decent cruiser too, but then we haven’t been going at autobahn pace. The dual carriageway runs out 40 miles south of Auckland and won’t restart until 40 miles north of Wellington. In between everything moves at 58mph – partially because that’s what the trucks do and partially because there are cops everywhere. So the Santa Fe returns 40mpg. Yeah, it would be doing better if it were a diesel.

Trouble is, sometimes I think it is. The 1.6 is thrashy and coarse when the revs rise, so I tend to leave it in Eco mode and not go for the overtakes. Drive gently and the complexities of this hybrid powertrain, with its regen braking and snoozy six-speed auto, are hidden. It’s quiet and harmonious. Give it some and the relationships between components quickly break down. The electric motor doesn’t have enough torque, forcing the 1.6 to overwork, which in turn asks questions the slurring gearbox struggles to answer.

These manners are at odds with the image the Santa Fe projects. This is a smart and sophisticated looking car, but more than that what strikes me is its ability to blend in to diverse environments. In urban landscapes or when I park it outside the extraordinary copper coated Isthmus lodge on Lake Hāwea, the Santa Fe holds its own. It’s a bold, confident, striking piece of design that sits beautifully against radical architecture.

And then I take it to the back of beyond: the ashy desert slopes of Ruapehu, Piha black sand beach, Milford Sound’s sheer sided fjords, deep canyons that writhe below mountains in the Southern Alps, and discover the Santa Fe works there too. It looks tough, rugged and prepped for adventure. Appearances can be deceptive.

It looks tough, rugged and prepped for adventure. Appearances can be deceptive

Sheep and mountains, that’s the Kiwi reputation, isn’t it? Factor in cows and flatlands too. But something else is in evidence. And no, it’s not just the swaying number 11s painted on every back road. But let’s dwell there for a second. We have boy racers, here the stereotype is the ‘mullet and singlet clad’ bogan, bred not on hot hatches but muscular, rubber laying Falcons and Commodores. They’re a gradually dying breed – the car culture leans more towards Japan these days.

But the actual culture, the feel of the place? Pure number eight wire. Call it Kiwi ingenuity, a reference to the belief there’s nothing that can’t be done with a length of 4mm wire. And there’s plenty of it around seeing as it’s the stuff that fences every field. It’s a mindset, an approach forced on New Zealand by its remoteness that gave rise to a generation of original thinkers, many of them in motorsport. If you want your eyes opened, Google Burt Munro, Bruce McLaren, John Britten or Richard Pearse.

We sail from Wellington – New Zealand’s most cosmopolitan, vibrant city – one evening and wake the next morning in a different world, Caribbean palms swaying by Scottish lochs. The coastline dazzles much of the way to Christchurch, where we drop in on one of our two NZ schools that subscribe. The Burnside High year eights are on study leave, but librarians Hilary Wilson and Louise Simons gratefully receive a stash of mags and assure us the teachers will probably get as much from them as the students.

A postal drop in Methven takes us towards the mountain spine that dominates South Island. A throwaway line in the Hyundai’s brochure got me thinking. “All new Santa Fe gives you generous living space for festivals, picnics or camping. Fold down the rear seats and enjoy a best in class terrace-like space.” Er yes, they mean the boot. So let’s test just how loungelike it is with a spot of stargazing alongside the telescopes of the Mt John observatory.

Hyundai hasn’t built in a mattress or even some Rolls-Royce style viewing platform seats. In fact it’s hard to discern anything that’s been done to create a “generous living space for festivals” at all. Because that’s marketing talk, not design reality. The truth, as far as you and your family are concerned, is much better. All the seats slide, fold, recline and move with Volvo-like slickness. One button press and the middle row tips and scoots itself forward to ease access to the rear row. To give the marketeers some credit the 1,949-litre boot is genuinely big enough for two of you to sleep in, while the glass roof of this flagship Calligraphy version does mean a partial view of the night sky. Still, it’s all a bit estate agent-speak and unnecessarily demeans one of the most spacious and well thought through load bays and passenger compartments around.

Which we soon get to put to the test. Two people loom out of the dark. I assume they’ve come from one of the telescopes, but no, ill prepped tourists out for a sunset walk a couple of hours ago and now lost, thirsty and looking for help. We manage to squeeze them, plus Rowan, videographer Charlie and all our filming kit into the Santa Fe and deliver them back to Tekapo, while above us the Milky Way spreads mesmerizingly across the sky.

But that’s not the end of the Santa Fe’s usefulness. Six well sited USB ports is just about OK (especially if you have the six seat layout with the captain’s chairs middle row), but I think I eventually counted 16 separate cupholders. I mean that’s got to be enough, right? They’re everywhere around this attractively designed, versatile cabin. It’s uplifting in here, there’s physical buttons, enough tech and tactility to satisfy.

And there are gimmicks. Everyone likes to boast about a world first, and for Hyundai there are two: a largely pointless concealed handle built into the C-pillar to help you pull yourself up to get things from the roof (why when there’s a roof rail that already serves exactly that purpose?), and a secondary glovebox that doubles as a UV sterilisation chamber. I’d back a wet wipe to be more effective. But still, it’s all evidence that Hyundai thinks deeply about this stuff in a similar way to Skoda or Volvo, and that can only be a good thing.

Dazzling blue lakes dominate this area, none more so than Pukaki, home to surely one of the most incongruous juxtapostions anywhere on the planet as a Soviet-style brutalist power station sits against a backdrop of powder blue water, snow and twinkling mountains. The highest summit here belongs to Aoraki, at 3,724 metres New Zealand’s highest point. Here the scenery is open, expansive, you look at the mountains without being among them. The other side of the Lindis Pass the scenery pulls you close and holds you tight. And nowhere closer or tighter than Skippers Canyon.

New Zealand’s most treacherous road was dug out in the gold mining era and has somehow bypassed all safety protocols since. I’ve brought the Santa Fe here for two reasons: to find out if it’s capable, and if it instils confidence. It’s an easy one to answer. Despite projecting a Land Cruiser vibe, it’s nothing of the sort underneath: no low ratio box or locking diffs here, just a modestly able off-road mode. Nevertheless you feel confident in it because the view ahead is open and unimpeded, the upright sides make it easy to place, the seats hold you well, the driving position is good. And you’re aware of what it’s doing.

Maybe you shouldn’t be. The chassis isn’t as stiff as you might expect, so when dust gets into the door seals they squeak a bit, and the suspension isn’t as well insulated from noise and vibration as it should be. But it’s softly sprung and comfortable and never once lets us down. One day it’s deep in an off-road canyon, the next tearing round Highlands Motorsport Park in the hands of ex-Hyundai WRC driver Hayden Paddon. I observe from the rearmost seats. Less supportive than the fronts it turns out. The electric is gone within a lap and without it top speed before braking for turn one drops at least 10mph. But the brakes resist fade way better than either of us expected. You tuned in for important family SUV knowledge, right?

No brakes on the rest of this whistlestop tour, which ricocheted from racetrack to the original AJ Hackett bungy jump to put a mag in the hands of AJ Ross and ask him to fall backwards off a bridge and have a read on the way down. We packed in as much as possible, saw and experienced all we could, but the scenery of NZ’s emptier island dazzled us. This place, this landscape, the gasp and wonder of it, well, down here at the bottom of the world, God got a bit carried away.

Which meant he didn’t have much left when he got to Invercargill. So we elect to meet Steve Muilwyk, our final subscriber (and possibly our most remote, 268 miles distant from the next) at Stirling Point, the most southerly spot on mainland NZ you can drive to. He rolls up in an immaculate i30N, in a finale that looks almost too perfectly choreographed. We take snaps, handover the last of the TG goodies and contemplate the drive back north.

It’s not been the most conventional test of a family SUV, and the Santa Fe isn’t as sophisticated to drive as it is to look at and be in, but I really admire it. It gets right the things it needs to and in terms of design, thoughtfulness and versatility there’s not a family car to rival it for the money.

And besides it if can handle New Zealand, it’ll handle whatever you can put it through.