Same design, sharper
This is the facelifted Hyundai Tucson! The striking design of Hyundai’s medium-sized SUV is largely retained, although the nose is secretly quite different. However, this applies even more to the interior!
Does the Hyundai Tucson need a facelift? You can argue about that, because the striking design of the Tucson introduced in 2020 still looks fresh in our opinion. However, Hyundai likes to keep things up to date and so we saw a facelifted Hyundai Tucson for the first time in June. Hyundai is now removing the camouflage material from the car and showing the Tucson in full regalia, although we don’t know everything yet.
First let’s see what we do know. The design is largely retained. By this we mainly mean the striking combination of grille and headlights, with various elements in the grille lighting up as daytime running lights and parking lights. However, things are also changing in this region. For example, the grille is made up of fewer (light) layers and has a different shape. Those lighting elements are also slightly chunkier in shape, just like the headlights. Previously, they were cut off diagonally with a smooth line, but now we are looking at more straight-lined viewers. In combination with the sleeker front bumper, this creates a nose that is very similar to what the sportiest version of the existing Tucson, the Tucson N Line, already had. That version previously received a different front bumper and more rectangular light units, although the shape of the grille is of course the same as on the original.
We don’t know what exactly changes at the rear. Hyundai has not yet released a photo of this, because today we are talking about a kind of ‘preview’. The car in the photos is not a European Tucson, but a South Korean version. There is at least one important difference with ‘our’ version: the wheelbase. This is the long version, recognizable by the side window in the rear door cut straight at the bottom. On the European Tucson, which is a few centimeters shorter, that line goes up on the door.
Interior
What we do see – and what will of course also apply to the European Tucson – is the new dashboard. Hyundai is now throwing the fresh, rounded dash of the 2020 Tucson into the trash, replacing it with a sleeker whole that better matches that of the new Kona, for example. Horizontal lines therefore play a major role and the screen initially integrated into the center console now fits optically seamlessly with the information display behind the steering wheel. The steering wheel itself is also new, at least for the Tucson. This steering wheel is also in the Kona and means three instead of four spokes for the Tucson, but also the loss of the Hyundai logo.
And further? And then we wait quietly. Hyundai promises that the facelifted Hyundai Tucson will be presented in European version in early 2024, and only then will we learn whether anything will change on a technical level.
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl