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 upper middle section of its family SUV segment.

The controls are mostly hassle free, including the new 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. Perhaps a bombastic N version will follow. 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 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.

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 mopeds that might be nipping past in an attempt to keep a bit more heat in the fried chicken they’re delivering.