Test drove the Hyundai Exter: Here's why I feel it is worth buying

There is highly adequate low end grunt and one doesn’t feel out of breath even at the upper end.

BHPian shankar.balan recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

I took an hour from my day today to go nearby and see the Hyundai Exter.

I shall just focus on my own workman-like impressions of this vehicle, purely as a normal, no-frills, lay-person consumer. I have honestly NOT yet read the official review and I have barely participated in this thread. And the last Hyundai we had, was my Dad’s 2014 Hyundai I20 Asta manual Petrol.

Saying all this, right from the moment they published the teasers and ads of the Exter and the brochures online, I have been quite attracted to this little vehicle as an option that may be considered for my Dad, as a replacement to his 2019 Toyota Glanza. Hence I ve been very keen to see and drive this Exter for some time now. I have said earlier that I like its looks. Today I was able to reaffirm that liking. It is indeed a chunky and good looking design.

Today, I got that chance I wanted. I had a very pleasant experience at the Exter showroom, because there was only one small family there and two other people looking at various cars. (I also saw their new Verna and it certainly does look very aggressive and handsome.)

It is a pleasant experience when there is no unnecessary hype and hoopla. And when clear information and display vehicles and test drive vehicles are made available easily so as to ensure the paying public remain engaged with the brand, in a new launch.

The Exter closely resembles its older brothers, the Venue and Creta. However, it is just a little shorter than the Venue when viewed from the side. I am very appreciative at the space engineering inside and external appearance that these new Hyundais have! The display car is the MT Top Spec single tone. The test drive car was the AMT Top Spec single tone. Both were in this rather lovely shade of khaki/ green which incidentally looks quite close in shade and tone, to my Rocky Beige Thar. (Being faintly militaristic in nature, this colour is amongst my personal favourites).

I am not going to compare the Exter with the Tata Punch and Nexon and Citroen C3. I am just going to share my own impressions of it.

I sat in the rear left passenger seat with the front passenger seat pushed back to my own seating position and despite being a big built person of 6.2 height I found the rear seat perfectly comfortable. Yes even the under-thigh support was acceptable as was the leg room. I think it is to do with the rake angle of the seat cushion squab. There was adequate lumbar support too. The adjustable head rests give me an essential support at the base of the back of my neck which allows for a certain comfort in the neck-rest aspect.

While I would normally never sit as a rear passenger in any car, excepting if it is a Taxi, I believe that I will be able to sit comfortably in this Exter as a rear passenger and go from Bangalore to Mysore.

The driver’s seat is height adjustable so I brought it to its lowest point and adjusted the back rest for my driving position. It was nice to sit in and offered very good visibility all around. Here when first seated, there was an impression of under-thigh support being a little less. But once I adjusted the seat and started driving, I found I was quite comfortable indeed. No problem even despite my height. There has been talk about the integrated and non-adjustable front head rests, but I actually am not grumbling about these. They are perfectly adequate as per my impression. Ingress and egress in all the seats is perfectly comfortable and the seating and driving position is also very good. Head room, leg room and foot room are fine across all the 4 seats. (I cannot think of all these cars as being anything more than 4 seaters.) withbthe driving position, one won’t miss seeing the potholes while driving. Yes it isn’t quite like the Thar which feels like you’re looking out of the first floor balcony; it is more like the Jimny in this aspect and it is perfectly handy for our driving and operating conditions.

The sharply raked windscreen gave me an excellent line of sight to everything around me. I did not feel the A Pillar Blindness the way it is there in my Thar. Yet, though it isn’t as unobtrusive as the A Pillar of the Jimny, the angle at which it is raked, easily compensates!

I liked the steering wheel a lot. It felt nice and chunky to hold. Feels substantial. The instrument panel and the cluster of digital information and gauges are easy to read and provides all the necessary info. The music system sounded reasonable but that is not my real area of interest in a car. Being broad daylight I did not bother with the lights. The horn however is very weak and I think one of the first things anyone will tend to do especially in India, is to change that. The indicator stalks and all are decently built and the indicator click click sound is of a ‘softened intensity’ which feels and sounds quite nice. Quite premium in fact.

The plastics in this car are of the hard grey black variety and I guess that is to be expected considering the price it is being offered at. I am very happy about the 6 Airbags that it comes with and of course the other safety features that it offers, along with a few of the other gizmos. Unlike the maps in my Thar, this Exter’s maps seem to be perfectly well synchronised and calibrated. And for all those grumbling about the Jimny and its lack of bottle storage space and general storage space, they will be quite happy with the little Exter. It has some pretty decent cubbies for all manner of odds and ends and yes, the bottle storage is perfectly adequate across all 4 doors. There are a nice couple of charge ports and a wireless charger mat as well which is a good thing.

The OEM dash cam feels a bit plasticky to the touch but will do the job in providing that essential recorded footage. The reversing camera’s quality is surprisingly good and offers a very decent definition of visual.

The manually operated cover for the sun roof allows for some level of ‘feel’ of more light and lightness on a long drive. However the quality of the glass itself felt a little less-than-solid to the touch. The doors and all open and shut with a decent enough thunk.

The boot space is nice and roomy. Coming from a Thar I guess I am bound to feel that way but it is actually quite useable being a well designed high-set large-hatch. The rear seat does not have split folding. But once the whole thing is folded, it becomes a large and capacious luggage carrier space.

I took the car for a test drive - the AMT version. And we drove it for about 6-7 kms, on the slip roads on the Hosur Road and on some back roads too. We also drove it for about a Km on a rutted, undulating, uneven, unpaved mud-track nearby.

I have never driven any of the Hyundai AMTs before, and I have come away very impressed indeed. It has the normal Auto and the Manual mode. In Auto it holds lower gears till about 1600-1800 rpm and then up shifts. There is a mild slingshot effect felt. If one slows down to near dead halt to negotiate a badly designed hump, and then after crossing the said hump, if one accelerates smoothly, one finds the lower gear being held till the above rpm and then it’s almost like a ‘second wind’ that the car gets, when shifting to a higher gear, hence this above mentioned impression of the slingshot effect.

The AMT is pretty smooth but one feels that kick at 1600-1800 rpm. It does not hunt for gears. It does whine a little but not as much as the Jimny 4 speed TC does and definitely not as much as Dad’s Glanza CVT does.

There is highly adequate low end grunt and one doesn’t feel out of breath even at the upper end. The engine feels nice and smooth and silent. No drama and no unhappy noises and all. It has enough power to overtake, even in Auto mode. The manual mode is responsive and while it will never give the same feeling of instant ‘kick down’ like my Thar TC gives, it is still pretty respectable. The power delivery cannot be as instant or linear as it is in my Petrol Thar, but again, it is perfectly respectable.

The vehicle feels competent in a straight line. It brakes well in a straight line. I did do some level of hard barking as a test and find myself to be satisfied. The ride comfort of this vehicle is very good indeed, the driving seat and all doesn’t ‘hug’ one, but it provides a lot of support. Lumbar support included and it feels snug.

I took a couple of curves a little quickly (60kmph) and did not experience the unexpected. There is as usual some level of roll, but well contained since it is a well sprung monocoque. Even on the above mentioned uneven mud track which I drove on, the vehicle performed very competently indeed. One does not feel the side to side swaying the way one feels in the Thar. Yes the Exter is much lower set but still. It feels comfortable when driven on such roads. It won’t shake you up unutterably. It is more comfy than even the Jimny with its well publicised well-tuned suspension. Its inherent 185mm ground clearance certainly gives a lot of confidence to tackle the typical urban and countryside conditions which we experience in India. Very good suspension tuning in my opinion. The steering is well weighted and not ‘lifeless’ as I have regularly been led to believe that Hyundai steering’s are. The EPS is decent. Light enough for the city. Firm enough for the highway. Turning radius is very comfortable in the city. This vehicle will be good for both city driving and highway trips.

The stock tyres are 175/65/15 JK UX Royale. These do provide very decent cushioning. However, they don’t really fill the wheel arches very well. And it will be the wish of most buyers, to do a small upsize of the tyres to perhaps 195’s. 205’s I believe may be a bit too much to upsize to.

It would also be very nice if the Hyundai folks were to offer a Sport or an N Line version of this Exter with one of their neat little small-yet-grunty Turbo Petrol engines and a nice lightly growly exhaust.

This Exter is temptingly positioned. It is priced well (Rs. 12.31 lacs on road in Bangalore for the top spec AMT single tone version is a fair price in my book, for this vehicle). It comes with this excellent Hyundai Service committment to Indian consumers. It is a very competent and comfortable vehicle with good features and plenty of safety kit especially at the price at which it is offered. It is calculated to appeal to a wide cross-section of small families, young singles and elders. The colour palette is attractive. It is a neat little outdoorsy Smart Activity Vehicle, if one doesn’t want to call it an SUV.

It offers that ‘sense of adventure’ somehow though maybe not quite as much as maybe the Jimny offers. But then, this is a vehicle that will appeal to a far wider audience than the Jimny can ever hope to.

I think it offers fantastic value and is bound to succeed in this market. Hyundai, (with or without SRK’s plug) is to be greatly appreciated for taking our Indian consumers seriously and addressing the market with honest sincerity. No wonder they are a great success in India. They deserve every bit of it my considered opinion.

Will I ask my Dad to change from his Glanza to this Exter? I will definitely ask him to drive it and see if he likes it. If he does like it, then it is a very worthy option to consider.

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