Say what you like about the Hyundai Santa Fe, it gets a response. I left it on a street one night and somebody - perhaps straightforwardly objecting to its shiny silver, X-registered newness, or maybe protesting that the 2.7 V6 version of the car is only available as an automatic - smashed two windows on the driver's side and left a brick on the passenger seat.
No attempt seemed to have been made to steal the car, or even to lift the detachable stereo, winking temptingly from the dashboard, or any of the other property lying inside this most capacious of Korean vehicles. (You could fit most of what you own in the rear of a Santa Fe, though, in these particular circumstances, I was quite glad that I hadn't.) As far as one could tell, someone had beaten up the car with a brick simply because they thought it needed it.
I could see what they were getting at, though, personally, if I had taken a heavy object to the car, I would have used it to beat out the door panels, which are moulded to bow smoothly inwards and help lend the car the slight appearance of something that has been shaken out of a jelly-mould just prior to a three-year-old's birthday party.
The jelly mould does seem to figure more and more prominently as a tool in contemporary car design and has perhaps now leapt ahead of the set square and ruler. The great automobile critic John Updike wrote, in the short story Rabbit Remembered, about the back of a 1999 Taurus: "A continuous blob across, like a moustache or a roll of pre-mixed cookie dough being squeezed in the middle."
He added, "Cars used to have such dashing shapes, like airplanes, back when gas was cheap." Now that petrol consumption is an issue, we have to resign ourselves to the fact that cars can't thrust themselves forward in quite the same way; they must look softer, more apologetic about being cars.
Still, as the Santa Fe proves, you can round off all the edges and still looked pretty pleased with yourself. This is Hyundai's first stab at a sports utility ve hicle, or armoured family carrier, and the idea appears to be to cut into some of the sales action enjoyed by the Toyota Rav-4 and the Land Rover Freelander by being wider and longer and cheaper.
Hyundai also refers to its hope that the Santa Fe will be deemed to offer some of the "presence and refinement" of the still bigger Grand Cherokee. But I have no idea what they mean by this, given that the Grand Cherokee has about as refined a presence as Jim Davidson.
On account of the softer, more rubbery shape of the Santa Fe, people who are bothered that they never went to war (a sizeable portion of the target group, one imagines, for sports utility vehicles) will probably end up sticking with the Land Rover and Chrysler Jeep products. But more delicate souls, who are looking for a gentler kind of tank, may wish to take a look at the Hyundai.
It will also appeal to anyone drawn to the pleasure of owning a car that people can't reliably pronounce. Even people who work for the company seem to divide between a kind of received Knightsbridge pronunciation ("Hie-un-die") and a lite Australian version ("Hay'n'day"). If in doubt, blend the two.
The four-wheel drive V6 version that I drove felt overpowered, as if the engine was built to pull a car twice the weight, and I wondered whether the other two versions of the car, with their 2.4 petrol and their 2.0 diesel engines, might behave more sensibly.
But then I probably should have done more to weigh the vehicle down with the ballast of children, animals and speedboats that are part of the life the Santa Fe so clearly envisages you having. The car is another of that growing roster of vehicles aimed at people who have bought, however willingly, into the contemporary, clobber-bound version of family existence - the family as a travelling department store, tyranically organised by children who, like Michael Jackson, will not countenance any kind of journey without an entourage of friends, scooters, snowboards, refrigerated drinks, inflatable pup tents, personal trainers etc.
Because Hyundai is determined to undercut the competition for price, the car does not spoil you with toys. No satellite navigation system or automatic climate control; no multiple CD-loader or boot-mounted barbecue range. There is, however, an illuminated ashtray, for those who enjoy illuminating their ash. And the rear window flips open (a button on the remote control unlocks it for you). I never worked out why that might be especially handy, except for cooling the interior while stationary, or for feeding the ponies which you may have put out to graze in the boot.
It's a hardy, practical vehicle, but a little bland and universal, both to sit in and to drive. But that's only to be expected of a car styled in America by a Far Eastern company using Austrian and German parts. Such is the Santa Fe - a truly global driving experience. Designed in California, built in Korea, smashed for kicks in London.
