Video: 2022 Hyundai Tucson Review: Big on Value, But With a Powertrain Problem

Honestly, this might be my favorite interior of the group. The materials are fantastic. The design is interesting without being complicated so it's still easy to use. Just a great all around package. And you're sitting fairly high in it and everything around you is really rather low. So it provides a lot of really great visibility out. Everything is really within easy reach. There's nothing distracting that you have to try and find. The layout I think is very good and we normally applaud them for including buttons on interiors instead of touch sensitive stuff. But for this one, we've had a couple quirks with this interior. Yeah, the push button gear selector, I never fully acclimated to it. I don't think you did either. Kind of an odd layout. I would've much preferred a more traditional gear selector. Exactly, every time I went to stop the vehicle and put it in park, I hit reverse because that's located above drive where it would normally be on a shifter. And then I had to put it in park so you know, where you've got buttons where they shouldn't be and no buttons where they should be 'cause there's no volume knob for the media system either. So you're pressing the touch sensitive screen or trying to press the touch sensitive screen. I had issues with actually getting it to recognize my finger. Yeah, and I didn't have as many issues as you did, but the touch sensitive control panel, not an ideal layout. Yeah, it's distracting and it's hard to actually select something and then find what you're looking for. If it's a knob, it's just generally a lot easier. But frankly, the rest of this interior is dynamite. The material quality is fantastic. It's nicer than some of the vehicles in this test that cost thousands of dollars more. And there's plenty of room inside as well. <v Damon>Yeah, packed with features too. Ventilated front seats, heated seats, heated steering wheel. The interesting little rear blind spot camera that pops up in the digital gauge cluster. And yes, as you said, this is one of the best back seats in the class. But not was great with us. And one of the things holding it back really was its power train. It's a base power train. You can get one that's a more powerful hybrid powertrain. But for the purposes of our test, we wanted to make sure that we got the high volume gas engine that most people buy. That's what this one has (groans) and it really does struggle. Yeah, and middling acceleration, which I would be more forgiving of if the fuel economy was outstanding, but it's definitely not because this motor has to work very hard all the time to provide adequate acceleration. It really does. And then when you're trying to go like through the the twisties in some of these canyons here, it really did show just how hard it was struggling to keep up with things and the noise involved with it as well was just a little bit overwhelming. But frankly, the powertrain is really one of the only negative parts about this thing, overall, it's dynamite package. Absolutely, everyday functionality is fantastic. Space, convenience, comfort. I thought the ride quality was decent. Just a great, nicely balanced package. <v Aaron>I don't even mind the way it looks. I think it looks wild. But you know, I think Hyundai has figured out how to be different without looking stupid and I really do think they nailed it with this one. <v Damon>I think it's a little quirkier than I would like, but based on the number of these I see on the streets, I think most people think it's just fine. <v Aaron>If you'd like to read more and see how it did in a comparison test with other compact SUVs, you can find it all on cars.com.