The Colossus Of Roads
by David Finlay (26 Jul 08)

Hyundai's i800 is a newcomer to the small but apparently growing market for vehicles that can comfortably transport more than half a dozen adults - and what a newcomer it is. It's rare to find, a group of motoring journalists gathered round a car saying, "isn't this just great?" but that's pretty much what I've seen happening with the i800.

It is truly vast, so much so that at six foot three I can sit in every one of the eight seats without any feeling of being squashed in. All those seats are impressively comfortable, they have proper three-point lap-and-diagonal belts, and access to each of them is excellent - there's no question here of having to clamber over or squeeze past things to reach the back row.

It's common for cars with an unusually high number of seats to have very little room left over for luggage, but that's not the case here. Even with eight adults on board the storage volume is a startling 851 litres, and although this is partly due to the i800's considerable height (which is in itself very useful if you have to carry anything tall) there is still about as much space up to the top of the rear seats as you'll find in, say, a medium-sized family car.

When you start folding seats, of course, the capacity increases hugely, to the point where you might be able to use the i800 to move house. In fact, if you want to escape the rat race of the property market, the i800 could actually be your next house.

The reason there's so much space is that the i800 is basically a van (not one that's sold in the UK at the moment, though Hyundai is looking into that). That's why it has as much room as a van, and why it looks like a van, why it has a van-like seating position and why it drives very much like a van.

More . . .

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