Hyundai Santa Fe Luxury SUV says goodbye?

Hyundai seems to have discontinued the Santa Fe Luxury SUV, its range topper in India. The vehicle is not on Hyundai’s website anymore, and a news report Team-BHP says that one dealer has ‘reluctantly’ accepted that the Santa Fe is no longer available, while another remarked that the vehicle will be available on a ‘made-to-order’ basis. For now, We await official word on this SUV’s discontinuation.

Notably, Hyundai has been assembling the current-generation Santa Fe through the CKD (completely knocked down) route in India.  The Santa Fe, sold in India, starts at 27.87 lakh rupees for the base, manual gearbox equipped 2WD variant. The 2WD AT variant is priced at 29.05 lakhs, and the 4WD AT variant is priced at 31.07 lakhs.

The SUV features a 2.2 liter-4 cylinder turbo diesel engine with 194 Bhp-421 Nm on tap on the manual variant, and 194 Bhp-437 Nm on the automatic variant. In India, the Santa Fe takes on the likes of the Toyota Fortuner and the Ford Endeavour. Both the Fortuner (25.7 lakhs) and Endeavour (24.04 lakhs) have lower starting prices than the Santa Fe.

Launched at the 2014 Indian Auto Expo, the Santa Fe now looks dated when compared to the much fresher competition. A refresh is the need of the day. The high price tag hasn’t helped as well. Hyundai barely sells the luxury SUV in double digits each month. Over the last one year, only 175 units of the SUV have been sold here.

The Fortuner sells over 1,000 units each month, and the Endeavour manages an average close to 500 monthly units. Over the past few months, Hyundai dealers have been offering large discounts on the Santa Fe, but to no avail. All said, it’ll be interesting to see if Hyundai has pulled the Santa Fe off its website, in preparation of a facelifted model. We’ll have to wait for Hyundai’s word on that.