Hyundai Santa Fe boot space, practicality and safety

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Practicality
Rating: 4.7 out of 5

The Santa Fe is a sizable SUV with plenty of head and leg room for taller adults to stretch out. All come with seven seats as standard, with the middle row able to recline and slide back and forth. That means it provides lots of leg and head room (especially if you avoid the panoramic roof) for taller folk with them slid back and reclined. Centre passengers have to contend with a slightly raised seat but no centre tunnel unlike most rivals

Slide the middle row forward a few inches you’ll find enough leg room and just enough head room for shorter adults to contemplate more than a trip to the shops in the rear seats. They’re pulled out of the floor manually but don’t require too much muscle power. They’re accessed via the passenger side with a button on the top of the backrest allowing it to tilt and the base to slide forward revealing a reasonable gap to get through, assuming the front seat isn’t slid all the way back.

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Boot space and storage

The door pockets are rather slim but thanks to a floating centre console, there’s a large storage tray beneath where you’ll find the heater and gearbox controls. This obscures your view of what’s in the tray, making it easy to leave items behind.

Thankfully there’s a pair of big cupholders and a smaller cubby with wireless phone charging in easy reach just behind the gear selector. If you need covered storage, a large cubby under the arm rest and a glovebox that’s big enough for the sizeable handbook but not much else.

Middle row passengers get fairly slender door pockets and a pair of cupholders in the fold down armrest, while even third row occupants get cupholders.

All versions of the Santa Fe have the same sized boot, with 571 litres of space in five seat mode with the seats all the way back or a useful 1,649 litres in two seat mode. Those figures should be big enough for most, but most large non-hybrid rivals have larger boots. Sliding the rear bench forward will increase cargo space, with this being done in a 60/40 split, not as handy as rivals’ 40/20/40 benches. To make matters worse, there’s no ski flap for long items. To keep the car from squatting at the rear with a full load on board, all Santa Fes get self-levelling suspension.

How easy is it to park?

All Santa Fes get front and rear parking sensors and a rear view camera to make manoeuvring easier. If you upgrade to Ultimate you get a 306 degree camera system and self parking. To help you see better at night, all models come with bright LED headlights.

Safety
Rating 4.5 out of 5

Hyundai claims this Santa Fe is based upon a new stronger platform than the one it replaces, so it should perform even better than its 2018 score. Here it got a full five out of five stars for crash protection from Euro NCAP although the test has got tougher since then.

What we do know for sure is that all models get blindspot monitoring, lane keep assist and automatic emergency braking that detects pedestrians and cyclists on top of the usual stability control and airbags.

Opt for an Ultimate model and the blindspot assist is upgraded with a camera that displays the side of the car in the instrument cluster and a highway driving assist that does a passable job of guiding the car between the white lines much of the time on the motorway.

Watch: Euro NCAP crash test video