if you're looking for good all-around family car
you can't do much better than the hyundai santa fe sport and I mean it
cars.com just and our top pick for small families
it seats five if you need to see more than that you need the regular santafe
with three rows and we need that our topic for large families and our overall
winner for family car of the year but for the sport and 2015
not much has changed it's still a great car has one nifty new feature we're
going to show you and everything else that won is over the base car comes with
a four cylinder engine with just under 200 horsepower and it's fine perfectly
acceptable but the turbo 2.0 liter four-cylinder we have here put that over
260 horsepower and it's a blast to drive power comes on instantaneously from stop
and you go flying up highway on ramps passing power is always there too and
even if you use the eco function which saves a little fuel economy
there's still plenty of passing power and that's not always the case
unlike a lot of hyundai's we test the steering and the hyundai santa fe sport
is actually quite good
now it has a button to control settings for steering with comfort normal and
sport but I tried them all and really can't tell the difference so I'm just
going to take it for what it is
i recently tested nissans all-new mirana which has a base v6 which competes
against the turbo sport we have here and the rado used to be a sporty SUV
instead the new one they aim for comfort so it's not quite as fun to drive as a
sport we have here but it is more comfortable and a little quieter
if there's one downside to the santa fe sport it's definitely it's mileage you
get the all wheel drive turbo like we have here gets 18 miles per gallon city
24 miles per gallon highway 21 miles per gallon combined against competitors in
his class to get 12 MPG better combined which actually is pretty significant
so let's say hey Dave I don't need a turbo I want the better mileage I'll get
a base four-cylinder well unfortunately the base four-cylinder only gets one to
two miles better than the turbo engine does it against other base four
cylinders
it's significantly worse what I like about the interior is this mix of
above-average styling and materials and really easy to use technology
now the materials on the doors and - might be hard to the touch but the
patterns on them look really good and even simple things like window switches
are actually quite unique
then there's a straightforward multimedia system which is exactly what
you want as a driver
you don't want it to be too complicated as great clarity as you can see here the
functions are exactly where we expect them to be and has nice big buttons for
everything else
one of the reasons you pick a santa fe sport over compact SUV like a honda crv as
well
it's a bigger vehicle a lot more interior room
he compared to its own class like the Nissan Murano subaru outback the spec
sheets all pretty much the same there's not much difference
you want the real field you want to sit in the back seat for example you can see
have plenty of knee room and Headroom
now the driver's seat exactly what I had it when driving and the other great
thing is there's plenty of space between you and the passenger
so if you have little kids well we'll probably find a way to hit each other
anyway but there's plenty of room there and another great feature for little
kids is the air vents are in the pillars of the doors which is unusual usually
they're down here in the center console so those kids will actually feel the air
coming out of them
one new feature on the santa fe a
and it's only optional on this top trim level is a smart liftgate you can hear
right now as you approach
let's say you have a ton of groceries in your hands or something it senses you're
coming it senses the key fob in your pocket and opens automatically so you
can get everything in without going in your pocket or your purse for it has a
system like this - but it requires you to
move your foot underneath the sensor this one just knows you're coming
once you're in the cargo area you've got thirty five . four cubic feet of storage
about the same as the outback but definitely less than the murano
however there is a ton of underfloor storage and these bins are really quite
big
there's another one right here and there is a spare tire
it's underneath the santa fe sport starts around 25 thousand dollars and if
you want a loaded version like the one we have here with the turbo engine
all-wheel drive and that ultimate package smart look
nice move well that's well over thirty five thousand dollars but there are a
lot of prices in between for a lot of different shoppers and a lot of
different budgets and that's one of the reasons we like it so much if it wasn't
for the mileage
probably the perfect family car