2022 Hyundai Staria Highlander long-term review: Welcome to the family

Christmas is a time filled with family feasts, giving and road trips – even when you’re living through a Covid invasion. Luckily our new Staria long-termer has room for overfed humans and all the kids’ presents.

What we love

So much space means you don’t need to sweat the luggage

High driving position combined with light steering and cameras

Electric sliding doors are so handy

What we don’t

No driver’s seat memory

No ISOFIX in the third row

Third row access severely hampered with child seats installed

Don’t tell anyone, but my wife really likes driving the Hyundai Staria eight-seat people mover. As I write this in my home office on a warm 36-degree Melbourne day, she’s absconded with the Staria to take the boys to Nana’s house in Geelong.

In fact, since the Staria joined the Drive.com.au test fleet in mid-December, the car we actually own – a 2011 BMW X5 diesel – has left the driveway only once. Every other time she’s needed to go somewhere, the Staria has been her go-to wheels.

Thanks to the Omicron invasion, the Staria has been in Rachel’s and my hands exclusively since it joined Drive. We usually share long-term test cars around to gather different perspectives, and that will happen with the Staria. But for now, it’s all ours. 

There are three Staria equipment grades – Staria, Elite and Highlander – each available with a choice of 3.5-litre petrol V6 and 2WD or 2.2-litre turbo diesel and AWD. I test-drove the base-model petrol variant back in September 2021 and came away impressed.

The Hyundai Staria Highlander CRDi AWD is the most expensive variant priced at $66,500 plus on-road costs. Add to that our test car’s premium paint ($695) and on-road costs, and the drive-away price in Melbourne comes out at $72,632.

That’s not cheap, but to compensate this one is loaded with luxury. The interior is full leather, with electric front seats, fully electric side doors with sun-blinds, electric rear door with auto-close, a generous sunroof, dual-zone climate control (front and back), smartphone integration and wireless charging mat, and satellite navigation. I’ll get to how well those all work shortly. 

Now, let’s embarrass Rachel a bit more. When I told her back in October that we’d be testing a Hyundai Staria for six months, her enthusiasm was… Well… Let’s just say she kept her enthusiasm well in hand. I don’t know if it was trepidation over the size of the vehicle or the predictable and lamentable stigma attached to people movers. 

As I mentioned earlier, our daily driver is an old BMW X5, so she’s used to largish vehicles, but the Hyundai Staria is much larger again. It measures 5.25m long and a smidge under 2m wide and 2m high, so it’s an imposing silhouette parked in our driveway. Not to mention the eye-catching exterior styling, which has made sure that the neighbours all know that we’re driving a people mover. 

But after her first tentative drive, she hasn’t looked back. She says it’s just so easy to live with, and much easier to drive than she expected. 

The high driving position affords great visibility, and the front and rear cameras combined with light steering make it surprisingly easy for us to manoeuvre. We both like the effortless acceleration provided by the 430Nm turbo diesel, and the eight-speed transmission adjusts gearing seamlessly and conveniently to suit the occasion. The suspension is deftly tuned to control the big body while also providing an impressive level of ride comfort, and the brakes are light but effective.

All of that combined means the Staria is a doddle to drive. This is not a cumbersome bus that only the brave would pilot through congested shopping malls. This is a car that makes you feel in command no matter the surroundings. 

It’s been fairly frugal on fuel use so far, when you consider this is a 2.3-tonne vehicle with the aerodynamic prowess of a house brick. Hyundai quotes a combined fuel economy figure of 8.2L/100km, but we’ve averaged 8.9L/100km for the first thousand kilometres, some of which has been Geelong freeway and the rest crawling the urban sprawl.

The last time we did a freeway run to Geelong and back – 140km round trip – the Staria returned a fuel average of 7.4L/100km.

When it comes to loading the Staria for one of our summer holiday beach days, the low boot lip (compared to an SUV) makes sliding prams and beach gear in and out very easy. The boot space itself is a cavernous 831L with the third row set up but slid forward. We’ve had the third row folded pretty much since we got the car, which has in effect created a sturdy parcel shelf for more items we don’t want crushed, such as food bags and backpacks.

The main reason we’ve had the third row folded is because it’s useless for us at the moment. For starters, we’re a family of four trying to avoid Covid infecting our young boys, so we haven’t been socialising as much as usual. Secondly, the only place to install our two baby seats is the outer positions on the middle row, which means you simply can’t get into the third row without contorting yourself gymnastically through the narrow gap at the side or climbing over from the boot.  

The open tailgate can be hard for 1.6m-tall Rachel to reach when fully opened, but the Staria offers two solutions. The first is that it can be closed by the button on the key. The second is, it has an auto-close function that does the business once it senses you have moved away.

The Staria’s very long interior came in handy on a recent trip to Bunnings – I’m converting one of my sheds into a games room, maybe for the boys and maybe for me, haven’t decided yet. So I needed wood for framing, some of which was up to 4.8m in length.

The shorter 2.7m timber slid in over the folded back seat and above the second row without drama, but those 4.8m lengths went right through to the windscreen and still stuck a foot out the back. Luckily, my house is a hammer’s throw from Bunnings, so I secured them internally and drove home with the boot lid up. Even vans as spacious and practical as this one have their limits.

As for the cabin, well, that’s been an unblemished love affair to date. For starters, there are so many storage spaces. There’s a lidded cubby in between the steering wheel and the instrument display, plus another in the centre of the dash. There is a massive, and I mean massive, lidded bin between the two front seats, plus another bin at the bottom of the centre console.

And each front door has four levels of storage, from the compact top pocket that doubles as a door pull, to the huge bottom pocket at foot-level that swallows our fat one-litre water bottles.

My only issue is to do with the driver’s seat. There is no memory function, which means I have to readjust the seat every time I get in after Rachel. But then she does too, so I suppose that’s fair. Otherwise, I have no complaints with the driving position. That said, I would like a bigger rear-view mirror so I can keep an eye on the kids as well as see traffic behind me.

(Update: I found the ‘Passenger View’ function in the infotainment system which broadcasts a fish-eye view of the second and third rows. Solved.)

The air-conditioning works well, although it does take some time to get the huge interior space under control on hotter days, and when the fans are cranked they do make a fair bit of noise. No more than most cars, but because of the cavern that needs to be cooled, you do need to run them louder for longer. 

Phone pairing has worked flawlessly to date, although we haven’t tried wired Android Auto yet. Strangely, CarPlay and Android Auto are only available over the wire on the Elite and Highlander, yet the base variant gets wireless convenience. That’s to do with the smaller 8.0-inch infotainment system on the base model compared to the 10.25-inch system on the other two, and is a quirk seen across numerous Hyundai models.

The Bluetooth call quality is good, and if you’re receiving a call from the Staria – when your wife takes the kids to Nana’s, for example – there’s none of the echo you might expect from a big interior. 

Before she hung up, I asked her if she was still loving the Staria, and the answer was an unequivocal “yes”.

So, would she own one? “No.”

Why not? “Because it’s a people mover.” 

Maybe we need to do something about the Staria’s street appeal while it’s with us to change perceptions? Maybe a cooler set of alloys or a wrap perhaps? If you have any ideas or any questions, fire away in the comments below.

Keyword: 2022 Hyundai Staria Highlander long-term review: Welcome to the family