2020 Hyundai Venue First Look: Pawn King
Hyundai readies its smallest chess piece for battle
Hyundai's crossover chess board is nearly complete. The recently introduced Palisade fulfills the role of profits-raking king, and now, five nameplates down the roster and eager to do battle on the front lines of the hotly contested subcompact segment comes the brand's pawn: the all-new 2020 Hyundai Venue.
Before we get to what it is, let's clear up what it is not. It is not a pared-down Kona, and it is not some hand-me-up from a distant developing market. It is a mini-ute tailor-made to suit American tastes that's gunning for good government and third-party safety rankings. It's also a pretty savvy piece of packaging, measuring ever so slightlysmalleroutside than the current class-runt Ford EcoSport on an identical 99.2-inch wheelbase (the Ford is actually 2.3 inches longer and 3.2 inches taller) while packing 0.8 cubic footmorepassenger room inside. Yes, it cedes 2.2 cubes of seats-up cargo space to the Ford, but this looks to our eyes like a wise investment in style.
Motivating the new Venue will be a 1.6-liter naturally aspirated Gamma four-cylinder engine featuring Hyundai's new dual-port fuel injection. This system places injectors in all eight intake runners. Doubling the injector count and giving the injector nozzles more spray holes greatly improves fuel atomization. This, combined with the tumble-inducing combustion chambers and externally cooled exhaust-gas recirculation, results in more complete combustion for improved power and efficiency. Output figures are not yet available, but we expect horsepower in the 130s and torque in the 120s (lb-ft). Teamed with the Hyundai Group's new CVT (which is marketed as an intelligent variable transmission, or IVT), we're told to expect an EPA combined fuel economy rating of around 33 mpg.
As the brand's pawn, the Venue will naturally attract younger buyers and hence may be exposed to greater danger than other Hyundais, so it will offer an all-star roster of advanced driver assistance and safety acronyms (no word yet on which will be standard on the base car). These include Forward Collision-Avoidance Assist (FCA), Lane Keeping Assist (LKA), Blind-Spot Collision Warning (BCW), Rear Collision Cross-Traffic Warning (RCCW), and Driver Attention Warning (DAW). One key driver assist system northerners might miss: all-wheel drive. Like the Toyota C-HR and Nissan Kicks, the Venue will only be sold with front-wheel drive, but at least there's a drive mode selector with a snow mode to help make the most of what traction there is in the slippery stuff.
