Sitting in a Canadair RJ900 on the tarmac at Chattanooga Airport ruminating about my short time with a 2017 Hyundai Santa Fe.
When the attendant told me late Thursday evening when I picked it up I was slightly disappointed that I wasn't getting something slightly smaller. After all, when I booked the"Manager's Special" through the Hertz website I was told I'd get a small car with room for two and one suitcase. That would have been perfect for my needs.
I added exactly 200 miles to the already 27,111 miles it has when I picked it up. Mostly on the byways and state highways of Tennessee, only spending a little time on I-40, going up and down several mountains and steep grades. It was comfortable on the longer sections. Took to the twisties with ease and was actually sort of fun to drive for a larger SUV. Acceleration was adequate and I no problems despatching with a late model Ford Escape that was being a particular problem for me at a stop light.
It wasn't all preaches and cream though. The transmission did some I'd things that I thought were odd. Any small incline would result in at least two gear downshift, even in Eco mode. On one of the aforementioned steep descents while using cruise control it selected a gear that resulted in the engine trying to hold 5k RPM. After about a minute of that I pressed the cruise cancel button and it went back to more normal engine breaking while on the decent.
I used to look at these SUVs and think, "Why would anyone want one of these turds?". Now I'll look at them and think, "I drove one of those once, they aren't half bad, but I don't want one of my own."
As I'm now somewhere 30k feet over Alabama (I assume), stuffed in a flying metal tube with 90 or so of my fellow humans I wish I would have had more time to drive the back country mountain roads of Tennessee, perhaps in something smaller next year.
Oh yeah, lots of room for cases in this thing: