SPY PICS: Bigger new Hyundai Santa Fe flies by

The renders were accurate; the new 2024 Hyundai Santa Fe will look nothing like the current generation large SUV and seemingly morph into more of a soft-road Toyota LandCruiser rival with a much bigger and squarer aesthetic.

That’s the pre-reveal indication provided by this heavily camouflaged prototype snapped undergoing winter testing in the northern hemisphere ahead of what carsales understands will be a third-quarter global debut and early 2024 Australian market introduction.

These fresh spy images of Hyundai’s new Toyota Kluger rival largely vindicate the Kolesa.ru renders shared by carsales in October last year, which in turn were inspired by a batch of covert images out of Korea earlier in 2022.

But while those shots were taken in a crowded underground carpark with dodgy fluorescent lighting, these new images have been captured in broad daylight, providing us with our best look yet at Hyundai’s next-gen seven-seat SUV.

Virtually every panel and detail has been drastically altered compared to the current Santa Fe (and all of its predecessors), with the side-on images in particular showcasing its newfound size and boxy silhouette – so much so we can’t help but wonder how that will affect sales of the one-size-up Hyundai Palisade…

The only other large SUV – established or upcoming – we can liken the new Santa Fe’s overall shape to is the Hyundai IONIQ 7 concept, the production version of which is also on track to arrive in Australia sometime next year.

This shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise given the new Santa Fe and IONIQ 7 are both large SUVs – although they’ll be sold at very different price points, with the former being the combustion-powered alternative and battery-electric latter.

It’s so far unclear whether the new model will be underpinned by the same N3 platform as the current Santa Fe and the related Kia Sorento or be based on an all-new architecture.

If history repeats, however, it will ride on an upgraded version of the current platform before switching to an all-new chassis as part of a major midlife facelift down the track.

Powertrains from launch will include the familiar array of petrol (3.5L V6), diesel (2.2L four) and hybrid (1.6L turbo), albeit with the usual array of performance and efficiency-minded enhancements.

A plug-in hybrid Santa Fe is also offered overseas but Hyundai Australia has previously declared there are “no current plans for PHEV models” within its local portfolio.

Transmissions are also expected to be carried over, meaning the petrol V6 will continue with an eight-speed torque converter automatic, the turbo-diesel with an eight-speed dual-clutch auto and the hybrid with a six-speed auto.

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