the Bucket: Bucket Seat: 2022 Hyundai Creta Executive

The Hyundai Creta is probably one of the more popular compact SUV’s in the local market with the first generation doing remarkably well with sales. It offered the consumer a mid-to-large cabin with decent luggage capacity with great fuel economy and that is what the recipe of the Creta is in a nutshell, fast forward to the last model on the market, it’s definitely gotten better in looks and packs quite a bit of tech offering but still has those core values of the original model. I had the opportunity to spend almost 2 weeks with the Creta in which I traveled over 2,300km with it, so I got to know the car pretty well with my time with it, here are my thoughts on it.

DESIGN

The revised Creta design sees major design changes to the front of the car that sports an almost identical face to that of the new Tucson. The bold new grill which incorporates the new headlights is a striking feature that catches your attention almost immediately, bold borders outline the shape which tapers off to the bottom to join the bottom bumper. The car which was in a metallic red/ maroon suited the car perfectly even with the silver brushed aluminium accents. The car has a great body design with clever lines adding to the bulk look, making it more of a crossover design than SUV. The rest of the body is pretty similar to the previous model with subtle design tweaks to enhance the appearance. The biggest change on the rear sees the shape of the rear lights change a bit, still sticking to that C shape but with the top line extended, making it look like J now I suppose. They did well to break the design with distinct characteristics, such as the greys, blacks and borders, would have liked to have the roof in a full black colour since there was no panoramic roof offering. The inside remains pretty similar to the pre-facelift model with the cabin being very spacious, and comfortable place to sit in.

PERFORMANCE

Powered by a 1.5-litre naturally aspirated engine, there’s nothing to write home about in-terms of performance but after travelling around most of KZN and parts of the Free State, the true beauty of this car showed itself on the long open road giving me close to 650km on a single tank of fuel! With the engine producing 84kW and 144Nm of torque, it isn’t bad when you require the power and it does brilliantly when coasting, this is also helped a lot by the IVT gearbox that works like a charm, and isn’t as annoying as the CVT boxes found in the other cars. Being a small car, I expected the car to struggle at higher altitudes while cruising at high speeds but to its credit, the car managed to cope quite well, with my cruise control set to 120kph, the Creta breezed as I travelled through the N5 in Free-State. Where you did notice the climate taking a knock on the car was when the range started to drop dramatically, with the box type shape and not very aerodynamic, it was obvious it wasn’t managing well with the dry air outside but like I mentioned, getting close to 650km from a 45-litre tank is pretty good in my books and I while still doing decent speeds.

COMFORT

This for me is a critical talking point when it comes to SUV’s in the same segment as the Creta. While the offering may seem great, the manufacturers tend to add cheaper quality materials in the cabin to lower the prices of the cars and while I did complain about the previous model Creta being very plastic, not much has changed in this model but what I can say, the quality of plastic is good (not sure if that’s even a thing you can say), it’s still hard and sounds like crap when you knock on it but it will last you a long time so it’s pretty robust, rest assured it won’t crack or melt in extreme hot temperatures. The seats are great and comfy, sitting for 7 hour straight and I had no complaints, and even no back pains at my old age. The Creta doesn’t have climate control, just you conventional type aircon but it does have a very cool 8-inch touchscreen infotainment unit which has built-in mobile apps which has wireless connectivity. There is two USB ports up front with a 12V power port and a wireless charging mat in this Executive model. The rear passengers have a bench type seat with vents for the air conditioning and one USB port for charging there devices. The cabin is very roomy with lots of headroom, even for a tall guy like myself which helps as you tend to feel claustrophobic in smaller SUV’s like this. The boot space is decent, you can get a set of clubs in there with no issue, and lots of bags as I found out on my multiple trips. Should you require more space, you can drop the rear seats which fold in a 60/40 split for additional loading capacity when required.

VERDICT

I wasn’t hugely impressed when I drove the previous model Creta, while the styling was different and they spec’s the interiors colours brilliantly, it didn’t really do much for me. This revised model though, is almost the complete opposite. I guess spending over 30 hours of driving with it meant I got the experience the car more and had time to digest what the car is all about. When taking all of this into consideration and looking at the price tag, you have to say Hyundai have done a great job with the Creta. Even with the entry model with the manual transmission, it’s a very decent offering to what else you have in the market at the moment. Overall, I quite enjoyed my time with the Creta, it’s a weird little car but it works and is great value for money, I suppose that’s the most important thing at the moment for most buyers and you certainly won’t go wrong with this model.