Hyundai has come a long way since it ran an ad campaign for the Hyundai Excel in which you could get two vehicles for the price of one. With the ’24 Hyundai Sonata, Hyundai is arguing to keep entry-level cars relevant now that it is firmly established in the mainstream.
The Hyundai team previewed the updated Sonata’s interior and exterior styling advance of its official debut at the Seoul Mobility Show in Korea.
You can see that the ’24 Sonata receives significant interior and exterior restyling, and the completely redesigned front is more minimal than that of the current model.
- Hyundai reveals the styling of the 2024 Sonata before its official debut at the Seoul Mobility Show later this month.
- The ’24 Sonata gets a pair of 12.3-inch displays in the cabin and an electronic column shifter.
- Hyundai calls the expansive light bar at the front of the Sonata the Seamless Horizon Lamp.
Above the headlamps, which are hidden, the new fascia has a full-length light bar that Hyundai names the Seamless Horizon Lamp. Compared to the outgoing model, the Sonata’s new grille has a more geometric form.
The Sonata’s lacklustre sales are likely to blame for the model’s extensive facelift for its eighth iteration, which debuted in 2019. In the dwindling midsize car category, which saw sales decline by 10% from 2021 levels, Hyundai only sold 55,000 Sonatas in the US in 2022, far behind the Toyota Camry (295,000 deliveries), Honda Accord (155,000), and Nissan Altima (140,000). According to Wards Intelligence statistics, the Elantra sedan, the Sonata’s smaller sibling, sold a lot better last year (nearly 120,000 units), challenging the Honda Civic for second place in its segment.
Hyundai added a large back lighting array to the Sonata’s rear end to replicate the light bar design on the front. Hyundai refers to this light bar, which connects the taillights on either side of the rear end, as “H-lights.”
The Sonata’s interior features the large screens you’ve seen in the Ioniq series thanks to the efforts of the Hyundai design team. To the left of the similarly sized media touchscreen is a 12.3-inch digital instrument monitor located in front of the driver on the sedan.
And while the previous Sonata employed a push-button gear shifter in the center console, the new sedan pivots to a column shifter similar to what you’d see in the Ioniq 6.
There are no details on available powertrains, but that will likely be cleared up when the car makes its official debut in Seoul later this month. This isn’t a generational shift for the Sonata, so the powertrains will likely carry over from the current models.
