What will Hyundai dowith its new 6-cylinder turbodiesel engine…buildit into a Land Cruiser-rivalling off-roader?

Rendering courtesy of Enoch Gonzales

Simple vehicle platforms, make a lot of money, and Toyota has been masterful at this. Especially in the SUV market, with its Fortuner Prado and Land Cruiser 200.

The ruggedladder-frame vehicle architecture delivers excellent durability and robustness in testing off-road conditions. Although cornering dynamics and high-speed stability are the debits, there is no question that a great many SUV customers see this as a fair trade-off.

Cheaper to engineer and assemble than a monocoque SUV, these ladder-frame vehicles from Toyota are handsomely profitable. And its rivals have taken notice…

The traditional formula has been to use a bakkie platform, for the development of robust mid-size SUVs. Fortuner is perhaps the best and most successful example of this, in its relationship with Hilux.

Hyundai is readying its Santa Cruz double-cab bakkie project for launch in 2021. With its unibody construction, this does not give the Korean brand a platform possibility to start rivalling Toyota’s ladder-frame SUV business. But the Koreans could be even more ambitious.

Market analysts at Hyundai will have done the numbers and ascertained that the large American bakkie market, is by far the most valuable segment to trade product in. An even bigger bakkie could become one of Hyundai’s product priorities in future, one which rides on a more traditional ladder-frame platform.

This would create the ideal development structure for an accompanying rugged SUV, to rival Toyota’s Prado or Land Cruiser. Hyundai also happens to have an excellent powertrain for such a vehicle.

The company’s new 3.0-litre in-line 6-cylinderturbodiesel is claimed to produce 205 kW and 588 Nm, numbers which would give any large SUV credible cruising performance – and adequate low-speed off-road crawling ability.

Whereas some other brands would struggle with the issue of launching something to rival Toyota’s Land Cruiser business, in terms of marketing legacy, Hyundai has no such issue. It can draw on an authentic ladder-frame SUV heritage.

Off-road enthusiasts will recall the original Hyundai Terracan (2001-2007). It might have featured an odd design, but theladder-frame platform proved extremely capable as an African adventure SUV.

In time, the Terracan developed a reputation as the "poor man’s"Land Cruiser, which was a credit to its ability. Leveraging the potential development horizon of a new large bakkie platform, powered by its latest turbodiesel engines, a revived Terracan could be tellingly successful.

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