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| After over 20 hours in the seat in the new Creta, I can vouch it is class-leading. |
A DAY and a nightspent driving in Hyundai’s new Creta have turned
me from firm admirer to a big fan of the Korean brand.
I started admiring the brand ever since the little turbo diesel
Getz klapped all the other small
hatches we tested in the mid 2000s. A small hatch that can fit in four beefy
blokes and get over 20 km to a litre of diesel still gets my vote. Then there
was the Sonata, as smooth a drive at legal speeds as you can wish for.
I’ve also bought Hyundai’s even smaller hatch, the midget Atos, and with the help of mechanic Jens Denk turned it into the world’s fastest (and yeah, only) hybrid AWD Atos.
Neither the Getz nor Sonata, and especially not my mutilated Atos,
prepared me for the comfort in
the Creta.
the Creta.
Five highlights worth noting
My main claim to fame as a car comparer is a
cracked coccyx, which makes me a super-sensitive tester of relative seat
comfort. Having spent 25 hours in the new Creta’s seat, I can vouch, this is one
comfy seat.
The ergonomic layout also meant that our very petite female tester
at Wheels, Shay Kalik, easily reached
the pedals without bumping her knees against the steering wheel console, as
often happens with shorter women.
There are four more highlights, starting with the brakes, which can
stop the 1 760 kg Creta in a short 20 metres from 60 km/h — for just after you
suddenly discover there is no stop sign nor road markings on the steep downhill
leading into a town’s busy crossing.
The Creta comes with a choice of two engines — a diesel and a
petrol — both 1,6 litres. The diesel consumption was impressive.
In the denser air at the coast in and around Cape Town, I got
6,7 litres per 100 km. Try as I might, I could not get this past 6,1 on an open
road driving at about 800 metres above sea level, which reminds one this is a
ute with a high profile. Once I climbed to over a kilometre above sea level, the
thinner air saw the consumption fall to 5,9 while doing a steady 110 km/h with
four people inside.
To put this in perspective, my Fiat Multipla, still the benchmark for family utility vehicles, gave 4.8 l/100 km over the same road.
The fourth highlight is the ride height — at 19 cm high, this
mid-size ute was made for India’s appalling roads, where it saw best sales of
10 000 units a month since it was introduced last year,
This road clearance means the 16-inch rims with 205/65 tyres hardly
notice the ruts on even bad dirt roads, but there is a full-size spare wheel in
the boot for when a pothole proves too sharp. At Wheels we have learnt the hard way to say voetsek to cars without full-size spare
wheels, and therefore give full marks to Hyundai for equipping cars for our
roads.
The fifth highlight, for now, is the pricing, which includes a
five-year or 150 000 km warranty on “everything that moves”, in the words of
Stanley Anderson, sales and operations director of Hyundai Automotive South
Africa; a two-year or 50 000 km warranty on the powertrain; and a five-year or
90 000 km service plan. Service intervals are 15 000 km on both engines.
Now for the niggles
The low lights include, ironically, the
highlights reflecting from the central console. No matter how high or low I put
the seat, the reflection light from the rear window casts a glare over half the
screen, making it hard to read the GPS map, which is out of date.
A shade sock over the rear window will cut the
glare on the screen, but I recommend sticking with Google Maps to guide
you.
Underneath the infotainment screen are two 12V sockets and a plug
for an AUX cable, but only one USB port. A second USB port, preferably aft,
would be most useful. I also missed a cruise control on the long road, and after
washing the car twice, noticed its many crannies to clean.
But these niggles are it, really, and on the price alone I predict
Hyundai’s dealers will see the interest in this confident Creta meet the high
expectations Anderson and his team have of the new car. For the only other
automatic SUV selling for under R400 k is Mahindra’s XUV500, a robust vehicle we
like a lot, but buyers have to date shunned its crouching-Cheetah design.
Which Creta to choose?
Let the power guide you.
The Creta 1,6 Executive
manual makes 90 kW at 6 300 rpm and 150 Nm at 4 850 rpm, and costs R50 k less
than the Creta 1,6 Executive CRDi automatic. This diesel makes 94 kW at
4 000 rpm and 260 Nm from only 2 750 rpm and if you drive at altitude, we
suggest the diesel is the SUV for you.
If for no other reason than to be impressed with all the standard features that cost and arm and a leg on competing models, also look at the Nissan Qashqai, Juke and even the world's most popular suv in 2016, the Xtrail, as well as Honda's HR-V, Mazda's CX-3, Opel's Mokka, Renault's Kadjar and Toyotat's RAV4.
Creta prices for South Africa (at 2Q2017)
Executive manual R319 900
Executive auto R339 900
Executive CRDi auto R369 900.
