Hyundai Tucson
Published · Researched 2026-09-21
Review: Hyundai Tucson (ICE) — the family SUV that does everything except excite
Voice: same forum regular, blunt on the powertrain; fair on the package.
The Tucson is the default answer, and defaults get there by being hard to argue with. The 2026 petrol model — 2.5L naturally aspirated four, 187 hp, 8-speed auto, front or all-wheel drive — is a comfortable, quiet, well-built family box that owners keep describing in the same words: "interior quality, ride comfort, noise insulation." Five seats, 38.7 cubic feet of cargo behind the rear seats, and up to 2,750 lb of towing. One Reddit-sourced owner put it plainly: "I've had mine for three years now, and aside from regular oil changes, it's been trouble-free." That's the Tucson's entire pitch, and for most families it's enough.
Let's talk about the engine, because it's the one thing everyone agrees on and nobody loves. 187 hp moving this much SUV is adequate and nothing more. A Facebook group owner nailed it: "It's a great SUV for daily driving, but when I hit the freeway, I sometimes feel it lacks the punch I want for merging." If your driving is suburban errands, you'll never notice. If you merge onto fast freeways daily or climb grades loaded, you'll notice every time. (Europe gets a different deal — 1.6 T-GDI turbo with 150 or 180 PS — which doesn't have this problem.)
The complaint file is thicker than the trouble-free quotes suggest. Canadian owners report windshields cracking in winter cold snaps — glass fragility is a genuine Tucson theme, not a one-off. Frost-related body creaks. Sluggish built-in navigation and infotainment glitches. Dealer service delays and inconsistent warranty experiences. And one that matters for used buyers: 2022 and early-2023 2.5L cars had oil-consumption and piston-design issues — corrected from 2024 onward, but check the recall and service history before buying used. A 2026 owner, Karl Y., documented a factory dashboard defect that sat unresolved for months until the dealer proposed replacing the whole dashboard, calling it "a loss of confidence in Hyundai's quality assurance" — one case, but an ugly one.
The social pulse: enormous, pragmatic, unenthusiastic. This is one of the best-selling compact SUVs on earth; the conversation is volume, not passion. Threads turned up nothing but an export ad and AI noise. Owners cross-shop Toyota and Honda, complain about the engine, and buy another one anyway because the warranty is 10 years/100,000 miles on the powertrain in the US — 5 years unlimited mileage in Europe — and the package is right.
Value call: $29,700 to $41,175 in the US, from €36,490 in Germany (street listings showing €31,690–€35,590 for 2026 stock), and the Tucson L from RMB 159,800 in China. Five-year-old examples sit around $18,104 — roughly 57% retention per iSeeCars, behind Toyota. Against the RAV4 you're trading resale and engine refinement for price and warranty; against the CR-V, similar story. The smart money is a 2025 car — the facelift, with the better cabin and tech, past the engine-issue era; 2026 is the same car for more money — ideally certified pre-owned, which is where the Tucson's value proposition is genuinely hard to beat. Towing tops out at 2,750 lb on the 2026 gas model, fine for a small utility trailer and not much more. Resale trails Toyota (reviewatlas), so buy to keep, not to flip.
Who should skip it: anyone who tows near the limit regularly, anyone who hates planning merges around a weak engine, anyone who needs the third row this car doesn't have, and — on model years — anyone buying a 2022–2023 without full service records. Those two years are the skip zone outright: the 2.5L oil-consumption/piston-issue era plus both fire-risk recalls (the 2023 ISG oil-pump controller and the 2022–2024 tow-hitch harness). A 2021 gen-3 car is reliable but dated; buy it only cheap. Everyone else: it's the default for a reason.
The tradeoff: the least interesting car you'll never regret buying — as long as it's a 2024 or newer and you check the service history like your money depends on it, because it does.