Hyundai Bayon Review (21-present)
Hyundai Bayon cars for sale
3.0
Expert review
Pros
Striking and unusual design
Spacious and comfortable cabin
Long warranty
Cons
Uninspired interior design
Lacks the sliding rear seats fitted to many rivals
Not as well equipped as the Hyundai Kona
The CarGurus verdict
If you’re in the market for a small SUV like this one, then the Bayon is one of those cars you really should try, even though it isn’t quite at the top of the class.
To be up there, it would need an interior that didn’t feel as though it had been plucked from the bargain bin, and perhaps some smarter sliding rear seats wouldn’t go amiss, either.
But elsewhere the Bayon is such a well-rounded package that you soon find yourself forgiving these flaws. It’s spacious, well equipped, comfortable, and even manages to be pretty good fun to drive when you get it out on a back road.
Match this to Hyundai’s competitive pricing, its long warranty and its excellent reputation for reliability, and suddenly the case for the Bayon looks pretty strong. Yes, its rivals are smarter, sharper and sometimes more upmarket, but the Bayon is still a neat little car that stands out for more than just its looks.
In a market that’s saturated with rivals, you need to stand out from the crowd. So it should come as no surprise that Hyundai’s latest entrant to the compact SUV mêlée, the Bayon, has radical styling that ensures it’ll do just that.
Whether you like it or not, there’s no doubting that its snub nose, with running lights mounted high up like brows, its angular side profile and its boomerang-style rear lights set it apart from the competition. But climb inside and its origins become clearer: the Bayon shares a dashboard with the Hyundai i20 hatchback, the car on which it’s based.
That’s both good news and bad. Good, because the i20’s dash is clearly laid out and easy to use; bad, because it’s built from cheap-feeling, shiny plastics. At least the infotainment system, which sits on top of the dashboard, is easy to find your way around and is quick to respond to your commands.
But while it may not be entirely pleasant to look at, the Bayon’s interior is at least roomy, with plenty of headroom and legroom whether you’re in the front seats or the back seats. Those seats split and fold in a conventional way, though, and don’t slide like those in the Renault Captur and Citroen C3 Aircross, which means the Bayon isn’t as versatile in the best in the class.
Boot space is a bit on the small side, too, about the size of a Skoda Kamiq’s, but smaller than the VW T-Cross, Peugeot 2008, and several others. On the plus side, the way the parcel shelf stows flush with the rear seat backs is a neat trick, and useful if you unexpectedly find yourself needing to carry a tall load in the boot.
You get a choice of two powertrain options in the Bayon, both 1.0-litre turbo T-GDi petrols with a 48-volt mild hybrid technology. One comes with 99bhp, and the other gets 118bhp, and you can have both with either a six-speed manual gearbox or a seven-speed dual-clutch automatic, or DCT. The 99bhp engine isn’t the most gutsy of engines and feels a bit flat in the middle of the rev range, but the 118bhp version is better, and feels much more eager, with plenty of mid-range punch.
What comes as more of a surprise is that the Bayon is actually really good fun to drive; it doesn’t lean over much in corners, there’s plenty of grip, and the steering is responsive, which leaves it feeling rather agile. Granted, it’s never as involving or as playful as a Ford Puma, but it’s still a lot more engaging than most other supermini-sized SUVs, and given the Bayon’s remit as cheap and cheerful family transport, that’s an unexpected pleasure.
You don’t pay for this with overly firm suspension, either; granted, the Bayon isn’t quite as comfortable as some of its rivals, but it still rides bumps pretty well, and doesn’t feel skittish over larger undulations.
You should be able to see around 45-50mpg from the 118bhp Bayon in the real world, and maybe one or two miles per gallon more than that from the 99bhp version. And if you go for the automatic, you can expect similar figures, if not marginally better. This is roughly on a par with, if factionally worse than, most of the Bayon’s rivals.
Hyundai’s servicing costs are very reasonable, and it offers service plans that give you the chance to pay up-front or monthly for servicing. Once the Bayon’s warranty has come to an end, you can also benefit from Hyundai’s aggressively priced menu servicing scheme, which allows you to keep servicing your car at a Hyundai dealer for little more than the cost of a service at an independent garage.
There’s more good news when it comes to the Bayon’s timing belt: it doesn’t have one. Instead, it has a metal timing chain, which shouldn’t need replacing for the duration of the car’s life.
So while the Bayon might cost you a fraction more than some of its rivals on fuel, its relatively affordable maintenance costs mean that, overall, it should be a pretty affordable car to run.
Unfortunately, we don’t have any reliability data on the Bayon yet: it’s simply too new to tell how dependable it will be.
However, we can get some idea by looking at Hyundai’s other offerings, particularly the Kona, which shares a platform and engine technology. So it’s a brilliant sign that the Kona came second in the latest Auto Express Driver Power survey, with a superb score of 96%.
Hyundai as a manufacturer also did very well in the latest What Car? Reliability Survey, coming sixth out of the 31 carmakers considered with a deeply impressive score of 96.3%. All of which suggests the Bayon’s reliability should be hard to beat.
Even more reassuring is the fact the Bayon comes with Hyundai’s standard five-year, unlimited-mile warranty. That’s much more than most manufacturers offer you these days, and is only beaten by Kia, MG and Ssangyong, all of whom offer seven-year warranties.
- The Bayon isn’t the only compact SUV Hyundai sells, because there’s also the Kona. So what’s the difference? Well, think of the Kona as the Bayon’s plusher, more extrovert sibling, and the Bayon as the more straight-laced, more down-to-earth car of the two. You pay slightly less like-for-like for the Bayon, but also get a slightly stingier equipment list, and the Kona is fractionally bigger – despite being more cramped inside – and a touch more upmarket. The Kona also offers you the choice of hybrid or electric power, on top of the petrol engine range, and there’s also the option of a sporty-looking N Line model and a hot N version, neither of which can be had with the Bayon. Both powertrains available are T-GDi 48v mild hybrid systems. For all that, though, these two cars are pretty similar in like-for-like form, so which one to choose will come down largely to personal preference.
- Go for a manual Bayon and you’ll get Hyundai’s electronic fly-by-wire clutch system, badged iMT. What this means is that the Bayon can automatically declutch for you, allowing the car to freewheel when it works out that doing so would save you fuel, an act Hyundai refers to as “sailing”. It doesn’t actually do this all that often, and you don’t really notice when it does unless you keep a close eye on the dashboard, where a little icon of a sailing boat pops up to let you know. Does it make a difference to the fuel economy? If it does, it’s negligible, but it does make the Bayon’s clutch a little trickier to use because you can’t feel the bite point.
- As with all Hyundais, the Bayon comes with a five-year, unlimited mileage warranty as standard to give buyers peace of mind over the longer term. This warranty includes roadside assistance and five annual vehicle health checks.
- We reckon the best Bayon is slap-bang in the middle of the range: the Premium, which gets most of the toys you’d want yet doesn’t cost the earth to buy. Team that with the 118bhp engine and a manual gearbox for the best value and decent fuel economy.
- If you really want to push the boat out, there’s always the Ultimate in automatic form, which offers a specification somewhat in excess of that which you’d expect on a little car like this one. Even so, it’s hard to entirely justify its high price.
- And if you’re buying on a budget, the manual SE Connect model is the one to have. Its equipment list is still fairly generous for an entry-level version, although the cheap interior finishes do leave it feeling rather dour inside.
