Petrol-fuelled Hyundai Tucson Sport kicks hard

Back in 2017, Hyundai Automotive South Africa were sitting on quite a few 1.6 petrol-turbo Tucsons in Elite spec, but they were six-speed manuals. And as you know, when you are paying R664 900 for an SUV, the go to transmission is automatic. So, they weren’t exactly flying off the showroom floor.

The brains trust at Hyundai Automotive South Africa had a decision to make. Heavily discount them and move them that way, but hurt their brand in doing so, or add some styling goodies and an extra dose of power and call them Sport models. They opted for the second choice which proved to be stroke of genius as these non-discounted Tucsons then flew out of the dealers doors.

Move forward to 2019/2020 and the facelifted Tucson is here, and guess what? This time instead of doing the upgrade in the face of losing money, Hyundai have offered a new turbodiesel Sport and a turbo-petrol Sport right up front, but with a six-speed dual-clutch transmission this time.

We ran a road test of the turbodiesel last year and this year it was time to put the 150kW/300Nm turbo-petrol Sport against the clock. The extra 20 kW and 35 Nm offered by the software upgrade is real fun to have under the right foot. And the performance exhaust does not drone nearly as much as the previous model but still lets you know this is a somewhat special Tucson.

As the power and torque figures quoted for the previous model only showed a five newtons increase to the new car, I wasn’t expecting massively differing performance times. And that is how it was. The old manual ran an 8.58 second 0 to 100 km/h versus an 8.61 second run by the new DCT and they stayed joined at the hip from there right to top speed. The quarter mile came in at 16.30 to 16.43 seconds, a 170 to 169 km/h 1 000 m speed, with both exceeding claimed 201 km/h top speed.

For the oil burner fans, and those who don’t want to try and remember the numbers from last year, this model hit 100 km/h in 8.61 seconds, ran a 16.50 quarter mile and a 168 km/h 1 000 m speed and also went over 200 km/h at top. I guess, no matter your preference, Hyundai has a Sport for you. The big difference is in fuel consumption. The diesel burned an average of 8.3 litres for every 100 km travelled and our petrol here is a bit heavier at 9.9 litres. But 9.9l/100km for a rapid full-size SUV is impressive in my book.

Where this upgrade falls down though is with something called a Pedal Booster that was added to the upgrade package this time around. In basic terms, the accelerator pedal on modern cars are not connected to the fuel system via a cable or anything as prehistoric as this. Nowadays, the accelerator sends electronic signals to the electronic control unit of the car and this computer talks to the fuel system and tells it how much throttle to give.

The Pedal Booster takes the message sent from your accelerator and makes the computer think the amount of throttle you are asking for with your right foot is lower than it actually is, and this means the computer asks the fuel system for more throttle even though you haven’t asked for it. For example, you depress the accelerator say 25%, but the pedal booster tells the computer you are only at 15%, so the computer adds 10% more throttle and your car accelerates quicker and is more responsive than it would be in a standard car.

On the run it works a treat, but for the Tucson Sport I would ask them to remove it as it is far too sensitive, so you find the FWD SUV wheel spinning and terrorising the traction control light and other road users every time you pull off.

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