![]() That’s down from 0.34 on the previous model even though this one is a lot bigger,” Lee said. “Our aerodynamics engineers call them ‘aero disasters,’ but we spent lots of time in the wind tunnel and got a drag coefficient of 0.29. If you can add a modern, high-tech touch to it, you can have a fresh impact.”īig, rectilinear vehicles do have pitfalls, however. Slab-sided design was big then but nobody really has it these days. “But also, design trends go around and come around. ![]() “In the eighties, many SUVs were made for off-roading, and we made it angular to emphasize rugged character and outdoor intent, so you may see a hint of seventies and eighties for that reason,” he said. This wasn’t the intent, Lee says, but old SUVs did provide some inspiration. When it was revealed, the Santa Fe’s boxy shape struck some observers as retro. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle you put together until you get a result you like,” Ha said. “When you have a very rigid, square back, a round front won’t match. ![]() Of course, there was also the rest of the vehicle to style. The reworked Santa Fe gives it room to grow. Its third-row seat and larger size now has it nipping at the heels of the three-row Palisade, but an all-new Palisade is due in late 2025. The enlargement of the Tucson in 2022 meant it offered more style and space than the Santa Fe at a lower price, but the 2024 design restores the pecking order. It’s also taller at 67.7 inches (up from 66.3) but some versions of the 2024, like the off-road-themed XRT, go as high as 70.7.Įnlarging the Santa Fe was a natural evolution for the lineup as a whole, too. It’s also bigger overall, measuring 190.2 inches on a 110.8 inch wheelbase (up from 188.4 and 108.9). Lee said that watching families load and unload SUVs at Costco was one of his major inspirations. There were also other reasons to open up the “gray zone,” the space between the vehicle’s outer edge and the inner edge of the tailgate opening. “We all have a cost limit,” Lee said, “But we think if something is really beneficial for the customer, we should do it.” The full-width tailgate and the structure around it are costlier to manufacture than the ones on previous Santa Fes, and the taillights had to be repositioned to make it work, which also made it more of an investment for which the design department did get some pushback from the bean counters. The bluff vertical tailgate, nearly 6 inches wider and 3 inches taller than before, was the starting point. “It was immediately clear that the width and the height would have to be ample,” Ha added. The Santa Fe’s shape began with the reimagined tailgate specifically to give consumers more utility and a place to commune with nature. Indeed, although Hyundai built an off-roader for the Korean market in the 1990s, the Galloper, very few of its modern crossovers had much of an outdoorsy or off-road focus until the past three years. “We told the chairman and executives about overlanding and camping, and pitched it as a doorway to a world we as a company hadn’t really paid a lot of attention to.” “Just like in the U.S., people in Korea were cooped up and itching to get out, so car camping and outdoor activities really boomed.” Instead of presenting a full set of interior and exterior sketches as in past projects, “We made a mock-up of the liftgate area,” Ha said. “This project started at the early stages of Covid,” Ha told Forbes Wheels. To find out more about how the new Santa Fe took shape, why it looks the way it does and explore all the interesting things inside it, Forbes Wheels sat down with both of them and got an in-person tour of the vehicle from Lee. Hyundai also brought along two of its designers, SangYup Lee, head of the Hyundai and Genesis global design center and Hak Soo Ha, head of Hyundai’s North American design center in Irvine, California. On the Hyundai stand, a kitted-out XRT model, riding 30-inch all-terrain tires, previewed an array of camper-friendly accessories. Although pricing and exact trim specs are still to come, there will be two four-cylinder powertrains, a 2.5-liter gas engine (carried over from the current model) making 277 horsepower and 311 pound-feet of torque and 1.6-liter hybrid with 232 hp and 271 lb-ft, the latter notably more than the 2023 Hybrid. It’s also full of functional firsts for the model, including grab handles on the C-pillars for easy roof access, loads of handy in-vehicle storage features and trims specifically meant for real off-road capability.Īt the recent Los Angeles Auto Show the Korean automaker also revealed more of what buyers can expect. New from the ground up, the now fifth-generation Santa Fe bears no resemblance to any of its predecessors and charges off in bold, boxy new directions for the automaker. It’s been four months since Hyundai pulled the wraps off the new 2024 Santa Fe but it doesn’t look any less shocking.
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