Bold, Beautiful & Ready For Battle

HYUNDAI’S 2020 PALISADE

- Brett T. Evans

Shopping for a crossover big enough for your entire brood? You’re spoiled for choice nowadays. Nearly every automaker offers at least one three-row SUV, including Hyundai. But the big news (pun intended) for this year is the arrival of that particular company’s largest-ever passenger vehicle, the eight-passenger 2020 Palisade. Replacing the Hyundai Santa Fe (renamed

Santa Fe XL for 2019), the Palisade is longer, wider, and more spacious than its predecessor, with enough breadth in the interior to make room for a third passenger on the rearmost bench seat. That means a maximum seating capacity of eight, with optional second-row buckets dropping that to seven.

Crucial for the family-SUV segment, the Palisade also offers competitive, if not classleading, interior space in all three rows. Headroom is down slightly compared to the Honda Pilot and Chevrolet Traverse, but legroom, hip room, and shoulder room are at or near the top of the class. And the Palisade boasts 18 cubic feet of cargo room with the rear seats in place, moving up to 45.8 cubic feet behind the second row or 86.4 cubic feet behind the front row. The Ford Explorer is slightly more spacious, the Chevrolet Traverse significantly more, and the Honda Pilot slightly less.

The 2020 Hyundai Palisade backs up its on-paper roominess with an exceedingly stylish and convenient interior. On our Palisade Limited tester, the big SUV’s dashboard is treated to a concave swath of metallic trim that wraps onto the door panels, which also feature quilted leather inserts that match the seats. A 12.3-inch digital instrument display joins a 10.5-inch infotainment touchscreen (analog gauges and an 8-inch touchscreen are standard on the SE and SEL). Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are standard, although Hyundai’s infotainment system is reasonably intuitive as well.