Old Hyundai Tuscon lives on in China with a facelift

The Hyundai Tuscon along with the Hyundai Terracan gave Hyundai India some tough times. The SUV duo were priced over the roof and certainly didn't have the looks or character to save themselves from an unforgiving market.

Add to that Hyundai's brand image which was no where as strong as it is now, the two SUVs were failures in India. Hyundai however compensated for the blemish by bringing the Santa Fe here. The new version of Santa Fe is ready to ply the Indian roads soon with its future looking very bright.

In China, the Tuscon still lives on. The SUV gets a new front fascia and mild refreshes to its rear which in our opinion is an halfhearted effort on the aging SUV. The new face gets lots of chrome embellishments as almost every facelift in China go.

The front grill gets wider, headlamps grow in size. The new bumper has a trapezoidal air dam and the fog lamps are pushed wide apart. However, the new look doesn't really infuse a fresh breath of air, if anything, it has ruined the charm of the original.

The rear gets reprofiled tail lamps and an embossed frame for the license plate enclosure. The rear bumper too is bulged and there is a body colored diffuser. The biggest change is that the twin oval tail pipes have disappeared into the body work.

On the engine front, the facelifted Hyundai Tuscon would ditch the 175 bhp 2.7 litre V6 petrol motor and would retain the 2.0 litre petrol engine which pumps out 142 bhp.

The car which will be built by Beijing-Hyundai JV is expected to be relaunched by first half of this year.

[Source: Autohome.com.cn via Carnewschina.com]