The Hyundai Santro is a 5-door hatchback from Hyundai, built from 1998 to 2022, when airbags, anti-lock brakes and Japanese build quality became the world standard. Under the bonnet: Petrol engine.
The story
The Hyundai Santro is a city car produced by the South Korean manufacturer Hyundai between 1998 and 2014. The nameplate was revived in 2018 to replace the Eon, and was produced until 2022. The "Santro" nameplate was applied during its first generation to the Atos Prime model, while the second generation is a standalone model. Hyundai derived the name Santro for the Indian market from Saint-Tropez, a French city famous for fashion, because the company wanted to project it as a ‘fashionable’ car.
What is underneath
Power comes from Petrol engine; other versions carried different engines, listed in the specification table below. It weighs 935 kg. It shifts through a 5-speed Manual transmission / manual / 5-speed Automated manual transmission / automated manual. The layout matters: the engine drives the front wheels, the packaging choice that gives a small car a big cabin. The wheelbase is 2400 mm. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
Its place in the line
Its family tree is legible: it took over from the Hyundai Santro/Santro Xing / Hyundai Eon; its successor was the Hyundai Grand i10 NIOS; assembly was at Chennai (Hyundai India), India. Its contemporaries in the catalogue — the Chevrolet Silverado, the Cadillac Escalade, the Audi TT — show what else the money bought that year. Nearby in the Hyundai catalogue sit the Hyundai Accent WRC and the Hyundai Accent.