The SUV that keeps churning out the awards and brilliant sales for Hyundai year after year has gotten a much needed facelift recently. With this facelift of the Creta comes a petrol engine married to a six–speed AT (automatic) gearbox. How does it perform? How does the car feel? Let’s find out.

Features and Options

2018 Hyundai Creta Side

On the outside the changes are subtle revisions to the front grille with chrome being taken down a notch. The grille has become bigger and taller too with more slats added to it. The front bumper gets a new design as well. There is less exposed plastic and a more painted bumper is in place.  The fog lamps which have a new design are now also housing the DRLs as well. The tweaked headlamp design sports the bi-functional projector headlamps that are also new. Like the front bumper there are similar minor changes to the rear bumper and the tail lamps that have been tweaked. Some changes that remain are the class leading 17-inch alloys which do get a new design and the keyless entry. The petrol automatic comes only in the SX variant of the Creta.

2018 Hyundai Creta Touchscreen & Infotainment System

The additional features you get are electric sunroof, cruise control, 17-inch alloys and an auto-dimming internal rear-view mirror over the SX manual. The infotainment unit comes loaded with Android Auto and Apple CarPlay. Never did the system have to put up with any lag or uncalled errors.

Storage spaces are ample with a total of 2 cup holders for the front passengers, 2 for the rear passengers in the armrest. An adjustable armrest with in the front has storage under it too. The boot is 400 liters with the rear seats not offering a 60:40 split. The side pockets on the doors can fit 1-litre bottles easily.

2018 Hyundai Creta -Bottle Holder - Driver Side

The car overall does miss out on things like, ventilated seats, which one has experienced in the Verna and Elantra. The fabric seats too could have had a better color scheme and made the interior a bit more inspiring. The seats themselves are not bad; the thigh support especially for the front seats is good. The material quality of the interior is fine. The beige and black finish is not a favorite. A piano black finish on the dashboard would have been better. While the seats are given a fabric touch the armrests are clad in leather, which is interesting. Overall, the plastics and the touch and feel of materials are not any different from the old Creta. Everything one touches feels robust and not cheap. While there is no improvement, there is also no degradation.

The SX trim for the petrol automatic only offers dual airbags while side airbags are reserved for the SX (O) variant.

Drive

2018 Hyundai Creta - Gear Box

The 1.6-liter petrol four-cylinder in the Creta is mated to the six-speed automatic gearbox. It’s got 122bhp at 6400rpm with a 151Nm of torque at 4800rpm. Put your foot down and the six speed torque converter gear box will drop down a few gears without the elastic band effect and strain that normally CVTs and AMTs of its class suffer and will serve up very linear acceleration. In fact so linear, that you won’t realize how quickly you are gaining speed until you look down at the speedometer.

And with all the power sorted you sit in a commanding position on the road and feel that you’re at the wheel of a proper full size SUV. At low speeds in the city this whole setup is really great but at high speed with a little handling asked from it, this powerful and well packaged compact SUV falls flat. Then there is the millage which when the petrol engine combined with the automatic gearbox did not yield any impressive figures.

As indicated after a full tank of petrol drained, the Creta averaged 9 km/l. 9 km/l! On the highway it did better with the millage going up to 13 km/l.

Verdict

Efficiency aside, the Creta’s transmission works well; it offers really smooth gearshifts and is quite a boon in the city. If you want the Creta, all the bells and whistles, looks, the right alloy wheels and trim can be found with the SX (O) variant which I would recommend is the one-to-go with. While up shifts are quick and immediate, you will notice some lag while downshifting. Could this be solved with a different drive mode? Sports mode? And Hyundai could give us some paddle-shifters while they are at it?

Price

The Hyundai Creta starts at 10.98lakh (Ex-showroom Mumbai). Should you get one? If you are going to use this car for city and occasional highway runs and want something comfortable with unlimited overtaking power look no further. But be prepared to meet fuel high fuel costs as the Creta does not sip petrol frugally. However when you feel the fuel be converted into speed a smile will break across your lips.

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