Hyundai Staria review

It’s rather hard to feel cosy when you’re surrounded by this much glass. Anyone who works in a modern office with floor-to-ceiling windows will get the idea. With that said, the front seats could be more enveloping, some hard plastics could do with a rethink and the whole thing feels primed for a once-over by someone Swedish. At least the leather-wrapped steering wheel gives you something warm to squidge and feel good about.

What about storage?

People storage or storage for clutter?

Let’s go clutter first.

There are so many cup holders, you could do that hipster deconstructed latte thing without pinching anyone else’s drinks pocket. Storage bins and pockets abound. There’s even a couple of lidded ones on the dashtop, plus generous doorbins and a huge sliding console between the front seats. A lot of this obviously depends on which model you’ve gone for. Some favour people over clutter. With that in mind…

There’s seating – and room – for an entire little league squad plus coach (that’s you, by the way). This doesn’t apply if you’ve gone for the four seat Camper. Although you won’t be short of space for kit bags.

What about passengers?

The seven-seater is the hauler to have, with four captain’s chairs giving room to spread, then the rear three seat bench for the overspill. Which is no way to talk about the youngest child in your brood. There aren’t any ISOFIX mounting points in the third row, and if you're planning the ‘MPV on weekdays, van on weekends’ thing, it's worth mentioning that the Staria doesn't offer the option to easily remove the second or even third row seats.

Tell me about the boot.

The top-hinged tailgate is huge, and there’s over 1,300 litres of space in the back before you even start reducing the seating capacity. SUVs can’t hold a candle to this. Space has been called the final frontier and the ultimate luxury, and we’d tend to agree on both counts. But even if you don’t, you’d have to concede that space is the ultimate practicality – there's enough room to consider a Staria for anything from family hauling to full-on #vanlife. We'd go for the commercial version with all-wheel-drive, put on some chunkier tyres and use it to take dirtbikes to trailheads.