Radical Hyundai Tucson won't scare off buyers

Set to launch in Australia in the first half of 2021, the next-generation Hyundai Tucson’s headline act is its striking exterior design.

The all-new fourth-generation Hyundai Tucson also boasts a sleek interior fit-out, oodles of high-tech features like remote parking, and a plethora of advanced safety systems.

But Hyundai’s primary objective for the Tucson is clear-cut – to stand out.

In an overcrowded mid-size SUV segment, Hyundai’s primary goal was to offer something novel, something different.

And in that respect, it’s mission accomplished.

“We are confident enough to have more daring products,” Hyundai’s global design boss, SangYup Lee, told carsales.

“If you look at the Elantra [i30 Sedan], launched at the beginning of this year, it’s a very, very avant-garde design. And it actually works quite well, and why not for Tucson?”

The new Tucson’s overall profile and body shape is largely conventional but finer details, particularly the front-end design with its concealed LEDs (dubbed ‘parametric dynamics’), are bold in styling terms.

Lee explains that the exterior design deliberately avoids the conventional ‘face’ guiding most car-makers’ styling studios, “where everybody has two headlamp ‘eyes’, grille ‘nose’ and lower opening ‘mouth’”.

So Lee asked his team: “Can we do something else?”

A former Bentley designer who also worked in Melbourne with the GM Holden design team, Lee is unapologetic about the finished result on the new Hyundai Tucson.

“I don’t care what others do. We only focus on the customer,” he declared.

“[If the] customer needs a wild car, then we deliver a wild car. If big families need a big SUV, then we’ll deliver a big SUV,” he added, hinting that its upcoming Toyota LandCruiser rival won’t look quite as dramatic as the Tucson.

Indeed, the radical parametric design is not going to infiltrate every single model in the Hyundai range.

“One thing is for sure, you’re not going to put this face on all our portfolio. No,” Lee said.

“This is the challenge, in part. We always questioned ourselves: Are we actually creating a product kind of like mainstream [vehicles], that everyone’s okay [with] and that they’ll accept?

“If you do that in the beginning it’s okay. But cars that we have to sell over one generation – normally six-to-seven years – I don’t believe that that’s going to be a success at the end of the lifecycle.

“There are so many options to choose from and there is no universal language that [makes] the car loved by 100 per cent of the customers, especially this segment.

“Obviously, Hyundai’s design approach is a more audacious, daring approach, rather than following the trend that we, in a way, did before.”

Hyundai’s head of global product management, Lorenz Glaab, added: “Bottom line, clearly, we are confident the fourth-generation [Tucson] will be at least as successful as the current generation.”

It’s not the first time a ‘what the?!’ moment has occurred in recent times, with audacious vehicle designs like the Tesla Cybertruck delivering brutalist visuals and the BMW 4 Series Coupe sporting a highly controversial grille design.

Related: Next-gen Hyundai Tucson revealed

What do you think of the Tucson’s new design? Have your say in the comments area below.