Hyundai Palisade 2.2D 4WD Elite (2023) Road-Trip Review
South Africa has no shortage of large, burly 4x4s - the question is, do you need to spend megabucks in order to get something good, or will the Palisade do just fine? We road-tripped to neighbouring towns during the school holidays to find out.
In this article:
Styling
Large, blingy, and boxy are three words to describe the new Palisade. Up front, an imposing blacked-out grille and split headlamps make for a threatening view in your rearview mirror. At the rear, the vertical headlamps and rounded rear give me Mega-American SUV vibes, like the Kia Telluride. (They are family, after all.)
Everything you need to know about the Hyundai Palisade
The overall shape and design are also very closely related to the locally available Kia Sorento, its cousin, with whom it shares an engine and most of its underpinnings. It’s a handsome, masculine vehicle - we did use the adjective ‘bling’ earlier—but it manages to be glamorous without being feminine.
Buying used? Everything you need to know about the 2021 Hyundai Palisade
Interior
The Palisade’s interior is luxurious too, in an understated, family orientated way. Soft and supportive faux leather seats, an ergonomic dashboard, and a sensibly designed layout create a cosy, harmonious, and user-friendly interior. The pièce de résistance is the large touchscreen with massive icons that appear once you plug in your iPhone (both Apple CarPlay and Android Auto functionalities are available). All instrumentation is digital.
The infotainment system offers a myriad of cool features, like a Passenger Speak function that picks up your voice and plays it over the speakers all the way to the third row, so you don’t need to shout at your passengers. (You can still shout if you prefer - and on road trips with kids, this is sometimes a necessity.) Quiet mode is also useful if passengers in the second and rearmost seats want to catch up on sleep but the driver and front passenger want to listen to a podcast at a normal volume level, for example.
Door binnacles up front are a bit small, but Hyundai makes up for it by offering plenty of room in the centre console for drinks and such - which can be heated and cooled. The absence of a large and clunky automatic gear lever helps to create a more spacious and minimalist cockpit - Hyundai has only employed square buttons to put the Palisade into Drive, Neutral, or Reverse, or Park, and it’s quite satisfying pushing them.
Space and Comfort
There’s no lack of either on board the Palisade. Row three actually offers usable space, even for mid-size adults, and getting into the rearmost row is easy - just push a button, and the seats fold and can slide forward. Making your escape from the third row is also easy and doesn’t require a helping hand from the adults, unless the kids are very young. USB-C ports can be found all the way to the third row. Seat heating/ventilation is standard for the front occupants as well as second-row passengers, and they manage their own air-conditioning preferences with a designated control panel at the back of the front central armrest.
When you open the electric tailgate and need to fold the third row flat, push another button, and down they go. Should you want to put them in an upright position, just pull the strap, and up they come. All seats can recline, and the second row slides in a 60/40 split. If you fold all the seats flat, you would be able to fit a double-bed mattress in the rear, turning your Palisade into a camping-mobile.
The Drive and Performance
The four-wheel-drive Palisade gets the full monty of off-road driving modes, such as snow, mud, and sand, along with the usual everyday-driving modes such as Eco, Sport, Comfort, and Smart. With its 2.2-litre turbodiesel engine (144kW and 440Nm), the Palisade has enough power and torque on tap when you need a meaty surge of power but isn’t too thirsty, making it a great tower for boats and caravans.
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We did go looking for snow, and drove plenty of dirt (or rather muddy) roads with great success, enjoying the Palisade’s surefootedness, smooth gearbox, and soft suspension, but the rain had washed most of the snow away. On the next day, there was a proper dusting of snow in Ceres, but we couldn’t make the trip. Instead, we visited my favourite Saturday morning market in Greyton, where the best beef samoosas in the world are sold. It was bitterly cold, wet, and windy, but the Palisade relishes this kind of weather, and we felt far removed from the elements, ensconced inside the luxurious cabin.
Fuel Economy
In my quest to conserve fuel, the Palisade remained in Eco Mode most of the time, although I did employ Sport Mode a few times just to test performance. At the end of my tenure, I wondered why I didn’t use the aforementioned Smart Mode, which is an intelligent blend of all five driving modes, capable of automatically switching between said modes, based on your driving habits.
In Eco mode, our combined average came to 8.7 litres of diesel per 100 km which is impressive, considering that the Palisade is a modern mammoth; unladen, it weighs in at 2 tons.
Safety
In terms of safety kit, the Palisade has everything on board that the most modern and luxurious cars have these days. Whether you're driving in heavy traffic or on the highway, you can make use of the (semi-)self-driving technology that will keep the large SUV nicely centred in its lane, steering around gentle bends and gently coming to a halt when traffic in front of you slows down and stops. You just set the adaptive cruise control to the desired speed, and stopping distance from the vehicle in front, and Bob's your uncle. This really takes the bite out of the 5pm commute home or the rush-hour traffic to work.
We found the system to be intuitive and intelligent. Another nice feature is the blind-spot monitor that is activated once you indicate in which direction you'd like to turn. It will then display the view to the rear on the digital instrument cluster so you don't accidentally turn into oncoming traffic (see below).
As for the usual safety stuff, the Palisade gets a five-star rating and you'll be glad to know that Isofix anchor points are not just limited to the outer rear seats of row two - another child or infant can ride in his kiddie seat on row 3 as well.
Hyundai Palisade Safety specifications, a glance:
- Lane departure warning
- Lane keeping assist
- Adaptive cruise control
- Blind spot warning/assist/monitor
- Rearview camera
- Surround view cameras
- Park distance control (PDC)
- Electric tailgate/boot lid with hands-free operation
- Forward collision warning
- Autonomous emergency braking
- Driver attention warning
- Tyre pressure sensor/monitor
- ABS
- Brake Assist
- Traction and stability control
- Hill-descent control
- 6 airbags
- Rear privacy glass
- Daytime running lamps
- LED head- and taillights
- headlight levelling
Price and Competitors
The Palisade goes head to head with the slightly smaller Sorento from Kia (with whom it shares an engine and many of its underpinnings), along with the Toyota Fortuner, Ford Everest, and Mitsubishi Pajero Sport. I will reserve judgement until after I have had the opportunity to test drive both the all-new Fortuner and the reimagined Ford Everest. Compared to the Mitsubishi Pajero Sport, the Palisade may not be as capable off-road (the Pajero Sport’s off-road prowess is legendary), but from a convenience feature perspective, the Palisade is more like a premier lounge on wheels.
The Kia Sorento is an excellent alternative to the Palisade, but it's slightly smaller, with a little less room in row three and in the boot. The Palisade we tested is priced at just over R1.2-million, and there is an 8-seater model available at exactly the same price, with the same specifications.
| Model | Price (incl. VAT) |
| Hyundai Palisade 2.2D 4WD Elite 8-seater | R1 121 900 |
| Hyundai Palisade 2.2D 4WD Elite 7-seater | R1 121 900 |
Verdict
If you want to travel in elegance, comfort, and style and you like a bit of exterior brashness, the Palisade is truly, as its name suggests, palatial. It was one of those test cars that you wished you could park in your garage forever.
Unless you plan on going bundu-bashing daily, I can highly recommend buying a Palisade for everyday comfort and the odd trip off-road. And that 7-year powertrain warranty is very attractive too.
