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ut the world has changed and thank heavens it has. A lot of that change has been precipitated by mandated safety and crash governments that recognised that just because you’re a delivery driver, tradie, or a mini-bus pilot, your life and safety is not worth less than that of people in passenger cars and SUVs. So that leads us to the latest offering from Hyundai, in the form of its futuristically styled Staria people mover/ mini bus, a vehicle that is actually based on the Korean maker’s excellent Sante Fe SUV model and which delivers great handling, safety and creature comforts. The Staria has since been joined by its commercial van sibling the Staria Load
060 www.truckandbus.net.au
(which we will test and appraise at a later date), with the two new models replacing the popular, accomplished and successful iLoad and iMax. The iMax and iLoad are very different to the new Staria family, even though they were very good and capable vans that did the job very well. The dynamics of the Staria are a whole lot better thanks to the SUV based platform as well as benefitting from the ability to offer a choice of either 2WD or all wheel drive spec. We cannot tell you how many times during our week with the Staria that random people would come up to us and ask ‘what is this? Wow it looks like a space ship!’. It was a very interesting insight into how people react to new and fresh design.
It has sloping, wedge shaped front, with smooth faired in lines, LED light strip running around the front of the grille and a sharply raked screen. The frontal design then meets the low window line of the side windows, which quite literally deliver panoramic views for the occupants. Then at the rear there are long LED light strips running vertically down each corner adding to that futuristic image. It is certainly different, and in a good way in our view. Hyundai has also clearly put a lot of effort into the engineering of the Staria and not just plopped a futuristic looking body on a van platform. Not only does the engineering of the Staria offer a variety of drive options on
