Hyundai Tucson Active X 2017 off-road review

The Tucson Active X is a great family rig with plenty of clever storage touches and useful items to get you through the day.

A deep phone and wallet recess in the centre console is designed to hold inductive charges in higher models, but works perfectly well as a secure phone holder. Cupholders of different sizes reside in the centre console, although a manual handbrake does take up more room than an electronic equivalent. Bottles up to about one litre in size can be stashed in all four doors, and those door pockets are divided to stop items sliding around. The centre console bin is tall but narrow, while rear seaters also have their own pair of cup holders in a pull-down centre arm rest.

No chargers or vents as mentioned are supplied for that second row, but there are two ISOFIX baby seat mounts.

Cargo room is good at 488 litres, even with the full-size spare that hides underneath the boot floor.

The rear seats, too, can be locked vertically to create a squared-off area for stacking boxes against it; it's essentially like a cargo barrier if you haven't got backseat passengers. Of course, each passenger can then recline the seat back to a favourite position, which is a nice touch.  There's plenty of head room and toe room back there, even for our tall teenage passengers.

Once the seats are flipped, there is 1478 litres of cargo space to drag along all of the accoutrements that a family collects over a weekend.

In daily use, the Tucson Active X really excels. Its relatively small capacity, 2.0-litre naturally aspirated engine matches well with Hyundai's in-house automatic six-speed transmission for seamless forward motion.

The engine can feel strained when pushed, but around town, it works perfectly well, especially in conjunction with the Tucson's front-wheel-drive layout. Its steering is firmly weighted, too, and easy to manage.

The local tune generally imparts a slightly firmer ride quality with less body roll, and this suits the Tucson perfectly. (image credit: Tim Robson)

Hyundai goes to some lengths to tweak the suspension of its cars to suit Australian roads, and the Tucson is no exception. As a rule, the local tune generally imparts a slightly firmer ride quality with less body roll, and this suits the Tucson perfectly. There's great visibility out the front with a sloped bonnet, as well as all around the car.

The Tuscon's doors open wide allowing for easy access, too. It's just basically a lovely, simple, no-fuss car that does everything right and pretty much nothing to annoy you or your passengers.

The Tucson is as much an adventure device as any other mid-sized SUV in that it offers more cargo room, a little more ride height, and a little more ruggedness than a typical sedan. However, the front-wheel-drive, relatively low-powered Active X isn't the first car that you'd pick for an off road adventure.

But as we've mentioned, adventure is often about using the correct tool for the job and if you wanted to throw a little bit of scuba or mountain bike gear in the boot and traverse a graded fire road to access your favourite spot, then the Tucson will have little trouble coping, despite its relatively regulation ground clearance of 172mm.

Its approach angle of 17.9 degrees, departure angle of 24.5 degrees and its breakover angle of 19.5 degrees doesn't make it much of a threat to something like a Toyota LandCruiser, though. Likewise, if you're on the weekend cricket or football run with your two kids and one of the neighbour's children, then the Tucson will swallow their gear and all of their stuff relatively easily. Those hard-surface plastics will stand the test of time, as will the leatherette-style seat covers.

Its braked trailer towing capacity of 1600kg is pretty reasonable – though 200kg less than a Mazda CX-5 – and a downball weight limit of 120kg means that smaller camper trailers or tinnies won’t be a drama to tow, either.

Hyundai rates the Tucson Active X auto as consuming 7.9 litres per 100km on the combined fuel economy cycle – it’s the thirstiest Tucson in the range by a small margin.

Over our 320km test loop, we recorded a dash-indicated 9.1L/100km, and a fuel top-up of 28 litres works out at 8.75L/100km.

With a fuel tank capacity of 62 litres, it’s got a theoretical range of around 780km on a single tank, and it’s perfectly happy with regular unleaded fuel.

Hyundai offers a five-year, unlimited kilometre warranty for the Tucson, as well as a free 1500km service and 12 months of roadside assistance. Service intervals are at 12 month or 15,000km intervals.

Five-year fixed price servicing costs for the 2.0-litre engine equals $1525.