Hyundai Santro

The legend is back! That’s what Hyundai is shouting from rooftops. Should you be listening to them and lining up at a showroom? Only one way to find out.

- Aninda Sardar

REMEMBER SUPERMAN’S return from the dead in Justice League? Remember how happy Lois Lane and Martha Kent were? The feeling at camp Hyundai isn’t really far from those emotions. And while Lois and Martha were expressing their joyful emotions in a fictitious farm outside of Metropolis, or whatever, I was watching the Hyundai folk’s unbridled pride at the very real Mayfair hotel in the thriving metropolis that is Bhubaneshwar. Twenty years ago when Hyundai came to India with the Santro it was a runaway hit. Yes, yes, we all love a good history lesson and at the expence of incurring the wrath of curious readers expecting more I will cut it all short and jump to the conclusion. The Santro did in fact become a legend. In a way that not even the i10, its replacement and ostensibly a much better car, could replicate. Hell, even after a decade a used Santro will easily sell for anywhere between a lakh to a lakh and a half. If that doesn’t tell a success story, I don’t know what does.

The Santro DNA

On to the new Santro then. Although it does share the legendary name of its long lost predecessor, the new car is in fact a brand new thing. The platform (which is the same as on the Grand i10), the engine, the interiors, the exteriors, everything is new. Except perhaps the steering wheel that has been taken off the Grand i10. That said, the new Santro does share something of the old Santro by way of its DNA. So you still see that tall boy design although it looks far less outlandish than it did when I was going from school to college.