Hyundai has fully revealed the new Bayon midsize SUV ahead of its price announcement on October 26. The Bayon will be positioned between the Venue and Creta in Hyundai’s SUV lineup and is squarely meant to take on the Maruti Victoris. It gets Hyundai’s latest ‘Art of Steel’ design language, a new interior shared with the Brazil-spec i20 and will come powered by a 1.5-litre petrol engine at launch. Bookings for the new Hyundai Bayon have commenced today.
- First Hyundai in India to get Generative AI voice assistance
- Interior gets dual 12.3-inch displays for instrumentation and infotainment
- 1.5-litre petrol engine gets 6-speed MT and CVT gearbox options
Hyundai Bayon exterior design
The Bayon gets Hyundai’s latest ‘Art of Steel’ design language, and from certain angles, looks very much like a scaled-down Tucson that was recently revealed for the North American market. Although Hyundai hasn’t revealed the exact dimensions yet, it’s expected to measure just a tad more than 4 meters, thereby slotting below the 4.3-meter Creta.
Up front, the layered fascia sports a split headlamp setup, with the LED DRLs positioned in a slim black trim on the leading edge of the bonnet. The DRLs also resemble Hyundai’s ‘H’ motif split in half – this one doesn’t get a full-width LED light band, as is very much the trend these days. Meanwhile, the bumper houses the main headlamp unit and chunky cladding finished in black and silver.
The Bayon perhaps looks the most distinctive in profile, with its flared wheel arches and sharp character lines adding quite a lot of visual muscle. There’s generous use of cladding over the wheel arches and the petal-style alloy wheels also look quite stylish. Hyundai has also opted for traditional pull-type door handles instead of flush-fitting units and the gloss-black treatment for the pillars creates a nice floating effect for the roof.
Which features do you want in Bayon?
At the rear, the Bayon gets a slim black band housing very sleek tail lamps and there’s ‘Bayon’ spelt bold and centre on the tail gate. There’s also a pronounced roof spoiler, while the bumper gets a dual-tone black and silver treatment housing some more lighting elements. Overall, the Bayon has a crossover-ish look rather a boxy, upright SUV.
What community is saying on the Bayon?
Hyundai Bayon interior and features
The interior of the Bayon looks very similar to the Brazil-spec i20 that was revealed a few months ago. The headlining feature is the dual 12.3-inch connected display for instrumentation and infotainment, while the HVAC controls and display are housed in a vertical panel just beneath. Thankfully, there’s generous use of physical buttons and dials – there’s a band of shortcut buttons below the touchscreen, more buttons on the steering wheel and also haptic buttons on the centre console panel. Notable, the steering wheel, which is similar to the one on the Venue, even houses a standalone pod for the drive mode selector.
As you’d expect with any Hyundai, the Bayon comes loaded to the gills with feature. The big highlight here in a Generative AI voice assistant – a first for any Hyundai in India. The brand claims it enables natural conversations with the vehicle. Instead of relying solely on predefined commands, it can understand conversational requests and respond with relevant information, says Hyundai. It also gets Bluelink connected tech with 70-plus features, OTA updates, onboard navigation, split-screen functionality and smartphone-like quick controls and multi-language support including 10 regional and 2 international languages.
Hyundai Bayon powertrain options
At launch, Hyundai will be offering the Bayon with the tried and tested 115hp/144Nm 1.5-litre, four-cylinder naturally aspirated petrol engine that powers the Creta. It will come with manual and CVT gearbox options. And while Hyundai hasn’t confirmed it yet, a CNG version is also expected to be added to the lineup at a later stage, likely with an underbody tank, making the Bayon the first Hyundai model over four metres long to be powered by CNG.
The Bayon is expected to priced between Rs 9 lakh and 14 lakh (ex-showroom) when it goes on sale later this month, giving Hyundai a two-pronged approach to tackle the midsize SUV market, much like Maruti does with the Victoris and Grand Vitara. With the Bayon offering efficient and economical powertrain options and occupying the lower rungs of the midsize SUV space, the next-gen Creta will move higher up in positioning, offering a much wider powertrain lineup, including a hybrid.
Dipan Sur
Viraaj Bhatnagar
