Hyundai Santa Fe review

You won’t be left wanting for space to stretch out in the Santa Fe’s front seats. There’s plenty of headroom – even in Premium SE cars that have a panoramic glass roof – and all models except SE come with an electrically height-adjustable driver’s seat as standard.

You also get adjustable lumbar support on the driver’s seat in every model to help reduce backache on long drives. And, on top of that, Premium and Premium SE cars also get electric lumbar and seat-height adjustment on the front passenger seat.

Go for a Premium SE model and you get ventilated front seats and a memory function for the driver’s seat that’ll come in handy if you regularly lend your car to someone much taller or shorter than you.

Space in the middle row is also pretty generous. There’s easily enough space for a six-foot-tall passenger to sit behind an equally lanky driver without their knees brushing against the seat in front. The seats themselves are supportive and – in Premium and Premium SE models – the outer two include a heating function to make cold mornings that bit more bearable. You can even slide and recline the middle row of seats if your passengers fancy nodding off – providing no-one’s sitting in the rearmost row.

There’s no annoying lump in the rear floor so your middle-seat passenger has plenty of space for their feet. Sure, there isn’t as much shoulder space for three adults to sit side-by-side as in the Skoda Kodiaq, but three kids will have plenty of space to stretch out.

Speaking of kids, you don’t get three Isofix anchor points across the back seats as you do in a Peugeot 5008, but you do get one on the front passenger seat and one each on the two outer seats in the middle row. It’s a doddle to lift a bulky child seat through the wide front and rear door openings and the Hyundai’s tall roofline means you don’t have to stoop down to strap in a child. The only mark against the Hyundai Santa Fe is that the anchor points are hidden behind the seat padding which can make them a little tricky to locate.

All cars come with a third row of seats in the boot that you access by sliding the middle row forwards. To make this easier, there’s a handy button on the passenger’s side that’ll automatically fold and slide the seats forward and out of your way to help you climb in the back. The resulting gap is bigger than you get in either the Skoda Kodiaq or VW Tiguan Allspace, which means even tall adults can squeeze their way into the Santa Fe’s back seats reasonably easily.

If you leave the middle row positioned slightly forward, there’s even enough space in the rearmost seats for two adults up to six-feet-tall to get comfy – for short distances, at least. With the middle seats in their rearmost position, there’s still plenty of space for two kids to stretch out without fighting over leg or shoulder room. In this respect, the Hyundai Santa Fe leads the VW Tiguan Allspace and Skoda Kodiaq – both of which are slightly too cramped to carry adults in the very back.

The small windows and tinted glass do make it pretty dark back there, but at least there are some air vents to stop passengers overheating. 

The Hyundai Santa Fe comes with loads of handy storage bins to help you keep its smart cabin looking spick and span. The glovebox (which is chilled on every model) and front door bins are big enough to hold a 1.5-litre bottle and there’s room under the central front armrest to squirrel away plenty of valuables.

All models get a slim storage shelf above the glovebox that’s wide enough to hold a large phone and all but entry-level SE cars come with a wireless charging pad for your phone under the dashboard.

The front cupholders are fairly wide but not particularly deep so you might have to take roundabouts rather gently if you have a couple of extra tall frappe-mocha-chinos on board. Passengers in the middle row get another two cupholders in the folding rear armrest, an extra storage bin under the rear air vents and two door pockets that are wide enough to hold a one-litre bottle nice and securely.

There’s even a pair of USB ports between the front seats and a three-pin plug for charging larger devices, such as laptops. In the very back, the Hyundai Santa Fe gets a couple of extra cupholders and a small storage tray.

The Hyundai Santa Fe has 547 litres of bootspace which is rather less than you can fit in the 700-litre VW Tiguan Allspace and 720-litre Skoda Kodiaq. It’s really easy to drop the Santa Fe’s rearmost seats and there’s enough space for three suitcases, a soft bag, a set of golf clubs and a folded baby buggy when the car’s in five-seat mode. With all seven seats in place, you can carry a pair of small suitcases or a set of golf clubs.

If you need more space, you can flip the middle row of seats down in a two-way (60:40) split to carry some very long luggage and a rear-seat passenger at the same time. There are also some handy buttons beside the boot opening to flip the back seats down, so you don’t have to lean forward to do so.

Unfortunately, while the resulting loadbay is wide and a doddle to load, its 1,625-litre capacity isn’t quite on par with the 1,775-litre Tiguan Allspace and the cavernous 2,065-litre Kodiaq. Still, you won’t have any trouble fitting a bike with its wheels attached and the Santa Fe’s flat boot floor makes it easy to load heavy flat-pack furniture.

You also get plenty of tether hooks to secure fragile luggage and there’s space to store the load cover under the boot floor if you need to remove it. Unfortunately, if you do that, it takes up all the underfloor storage, so there’s nowhere left for a few soft bags.

There aren’t any handy netted cubbies or elasticated straps to hold smaller items in place, which you do get in the Skoda, but at least the Hyundai Santa Fe comes with a 12V socket in the boot – ideal for plugging in a portable vacuum cleaner if you fancy giving the boot a decent clean – and there’s space under the floor to store the load cover should you need to remove it.