2024 Hyundai Sonata: official.
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After an eternity of illustrations and spy shots, we finally get to see what the revised 2024 Hyundai Sonata really looks like.
While the weirdo fish face is now gone, the front end is still not a clean design at all. The new horizontal LED line is a really nice touch and reminiscent of the new Grandeur and Kona, but everything below the hood is quite a mess. There are way too many super straight lines and scoops everywhere, and too much crappy-looking black plastic all over the place. And that really huge lower grille design is not needed at all. It looks like a different team designed the lower part of the front end. Out back, the new rear light has a very nice and simple design, but again, that poor bumper is filled with too much black plastic and weirdo”edgy” and overly aggressive side trim. Why? Why add all that crap to an otherwise nice design? The same company just came out with the amazing-looking new Grandeur. A super modern, classy, and simple design. Why not try to do something similar?
Things are better inside. The current Sonata already had a very nice interior that really didn’t need much change, but the new one is actually better and more impressive. If not really original, since everything now seems to have the giant super widescreen display, at least it looks pretty clean. The lower part of the dash seems untouched. The console has been revised and the door panels seem to be the same as before. The shifter is now on the column, similar to the Ioniq 5.
The Sonata is rumored to maybe come with a standard 2.5 Liter Turbo in the US. Which would be quite a step up from the current standard non-Turbo 2.5 Liter with 191HP (The Turbo is currently standard on the N-Line with 290HP). AWD will be a new option on the 2024 Sonata.
Overall, I would say the 2024 Sonata looks much more modern inside and out than the “truly new” 2023 Honda Accord. It will be interesting to see what Toyota does with the next-generation Camry. But it is still disappointing coming from the company that gave us the new grandeur a few months ago.
As mentioned before, the current Sonata is scheduled to be the last generation, and the 2024 model will be the last time we see something new for the Sonata. Unless Hyundai decides to use the name for an upcoming EV in 2 or 3 years.
The lower part of the dash got a lot of changes as well including the air vents now go from one side to the other like the Palisade’s and the area where the controllers are looks bigger.
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Not entirely hating it. Definitely more aggressive. Korean designs are always a tad fussy (especially their wheels), but this is leaps and bounds better looking than the catfish face. The interior, I’m not so sure. Looks like they’ve taken a page from the Elantra where the space to the left of the drivers IP is just dead and serves no purpose. But, if the 2.5T becomes standard over the 1.6T…BIG improvement. Two minutes into a test drive, I knew I wouldn’t become an owner of a Kia K5 GT Line. The 1.6T was loud, coarse, and very underwhelming.
I’m amazed at how fast the Korean’s are putting out new designs, by Japanese standards they would call this a new generation and yet this is just an extensive face lift for probably not a high selling sedan model. It just feels like they are not slowing down on pushing tech to their cars and rapidly introducing EVs. It feels like they have a fire under their a** to keep pushing that’s outpacing even some german brands with refreshes.
Overall, I’d say this is a huge improvement. HAG’s midfresh changes are rivaling Mazda’s these days. The only thing I really don’t like is the column shifter. Pretty sure I’m in the minority here, but after using the push button gear selector since 2020 on the wife’s Palisade, I like the current Sonata’s shifter more. 🤷♂️
blueface, to be fair, most German brand refreshes of late are a slightly reshaped bumper and light signature inside the lenses.. nothing near as extensive as these.