Interior & Features
Everything on the inside has been carried over from the existing Verna, where Hyundai’s obsession with beige shines out to make the ambience in the cabin feel warm, comfortable and upbeat. Usage of high quality materials amplify the feel good factor and make you believe that your money has been well spent. Plastics, fit-n-finish, the perforated leather seats and everything that you touch and feel exude of quality workmanship.
Beginning with the conventional looking steering wheel, it can be adjusted for rake and reach. It incorporates controls for the audio system and telephony, switches for which feel robust and operate with a positive feedback. Our only grouse, the little horn pad requires one hand to be taken off the wheel in order to honk. The other thing that would make you take your palm off the wheel is the toggle switch for the Multi-information display, which has been placed behind the round thing, bordering the instrument cluster. Incorporating it in the steering itself would’ve made life easier. The stalks handle the regular fare of controls for the automated headlights, wipers and blinkers. The OBD port and dials for the follow-me-home headlight delay function and leveling adjustment are provisioned just above the bonnet lever.
The Instrument cluster features two chrome ringed white dials which stay lit throughout. Needles are white too, pointing out from what appears as some moon eclipsing a blue lit Sun. The Multi-information display unit is located in the center and displays multitude of information, including a cell phone network bar type display for fuel levels and engine temperature, distance to empty, average fuel efficiency, instantaneous FE, external temperature, and the usual warning signs. It also displays eco mode status and recommends the right gear to upshift to, in order to extract maximum economy, while driving the manual variants.
The upper half of the center console houses twin AC vents, the audio system, buttons for the hazard lights, and front and rear demisters. Flanked by a U-shaped faux wood insert, the Start/Stop button sits right next to it, housing itself in a chrome surrounding.
The lower half of the console is finished in the same rubberized plastic material that also covers the top of the dashboard. It features controls for the automatic air-conditioning system and also has a little display that tells you about the current settings and outside temperature. Right at the bottom, you’d find a 12V power outlet, USB and Aux-in ports.
There is plenty of storage space in the cabin, including a cooled glove box that runs quite deep, a sunglass holder below the twin cabin lights up front, space in the front and rear center armrest, twin cup holders right next to the handbrake lever, a small cavity which can hold your phone just above them, bottle holder in all four doors and map holders in the front seat backrest.
Windows all round are powered, however, it is only the driver side glass that gets an anti-pinch and auto up / down feature. Faux-wood makes an all round appearance around every window switch on all doors. External mirrors fold electrically and have been embedded with repeaters for the blinkers. Both sun visors come with a mirror, while the internal rear-view mirror is an electro chromic unit that also incorporates the screen for the rear-view camera which works alongside parking sensors.
Among the two new features which have been introduced is an ergo lever on the front passenger seat backrest that allows the rear passenger to slide the front seat, liberating more legroom, while another nifty addition is a sliding front center armrest that enhances driving comfort even if your arms are lengthier than those of the law. Talking about comfort, the driver seat is height adjustable and coupled with the adjustable steering; it is easy to achieve a comfortable driving position. Both front seats provide good side bolstering, which is a boon when the Verna is driven in a spirited manner. Well, more about that later. Coming back to the front seats, under thigh and back support is fairly good and we were quite comfortable after a 120 km drive.
The rear seats though, don’t score all that high on under thigh support, especially for folks who almost reach or breach the 6 feet mark. Although there is space to rest your arms on all doors, the rear seat has been equipped with an arm-rest in the middle that also has a cup-holder and can be stowed away when there is a need to ferry five humans, although that would be a bit of a squeeze. Head and shoulder room is adequate for people of all sizes.
Hyundai hasn’t equipped the 4S Verna with a rear A/C vent and given the time of the year, we weren’t really able to test the cooling efficiency of the unit. However, it has something Hyundai calls a ‘Cluster ionizer’ that ensures the air quality in the cabin remains fresh and healthy. Shedding some more light on the music system, we feel a touch screen infotainment unit should’ve made an appearance, given the fact that even cars from a lower segment have started coming with one. Audio quality from the 6-speaker unit isn’t something that would please the audiophile in you, but does its job, filling the cabin with distortion free sound. It can play discs, music from your cell phone via Bluetooth, the Aux-in port, or you may choose to use the 1GB internal memory to store the symphonies of your choice.
At 490 litres, boot space might not be class leading, but can swallow a really large and a medium sized suitcase and a couple smaller bags. Beneath all that, the spare wheel is a steel unit.
This verna has got distance to empty, realtime and average fueld economy, speed sensing auto lock doors. Why can’t Hyundai provide them in hatches? These are kind of security features. They must be common across. I was in horrifying situation in my i20 as I did not have an idea about next fuel station and was running low. Santro had speed sensing auto door lock and they have removed it from next generation hatches, sick.