KING’S GAMBIT!

An impatient and rather long wait for the sports utility vehicle from Hyundai finally came to an end in the rather green and wet environs of Ernakulum. Once behind the wheel and having tasted blood, not even the blinding rain could stop us from exploring Fort Kochi and Willingdon Island and taking off to Alleppey and Munnar. The Hyundai Terracan endeared itself to both Aspi Bhathena and Yogendra Pratap in the three days that they had to put the SUV through a gruelling schedule, from the backwaters of Alleppey to the tea estates of Munnar.

The Terracan is meant to mean the king of land, as the name is derived from the words terra and khan, but try telling that to a Russian and she will in all probability turn away in disgust. For, tarakan, which sounds very much the same as the Terracan when the Russians say it, is their word for cockroach!

And although the SUV might have a few qualities like durability and omnivorous nature in common with the household pest, the two are a breed apart, nay several breeds apart!

Having waited for a Terracan for over a year now since we first heard about Hyundai’s SUV making its way to India, we should have been fuming by now. But the delay in its India launch has given to it one of its best features, its heart in the form of the 2.9-litre common rail direct injection turbocharged and intercooled diesel engine.

Hyundai has been making SUVs based on the old Pajero-platform for quite some time and has since developed the Santa Fe as well, another SUV but with a monocoque chassis which gives it much better manners on the road but robs it of some ruggedness and off-roading abilities.

Not only did Hyundai stick to its guns in getting its true blue off-roader to India but also delayed its launch so that it could have the 2.9-litre common rail engine instead of the 2.5-litre engine that the Terracan was earlier being sold with. It met with moderate success at that, having sold about 100,000 units in the previous calendar year (65,000 of these outside Korea) after making its debut at the Geneva Motor Show in March 2001 as a replacement for the Galloper (basically a revised Mitsubishi Shogun/Pajero) which had sold 250,000 units worldwide.

And as the road test reveals, the Terracan and more specifically, the 2.9-litre powerplant turned out to be very much worth the wait.