Hyundai i800 (2008-2019) Review

Are you a family of eight? Or do you routinely carry seven passengers? If so, the Hyundai i800 is ideal for you because it’s one of a handful of people carriers able to seat eight in comfort and still have space left over for their luggage. Everyone gets plenty of room for heads, legs and shoulders, so even Grandma won’t complain on longer trips.

The Hyundai i800 is at its happiest on longer motorway trips where it’s long-legged turbodiesel engine lopes along with surprisingly little noise from under the bonnet. An automatic gearbox is standard on the more powerful 170PS version of this engine and is well matched to the engine. Choose the less powerful 136PS version with its five-speed manual, or from May 2013 a six-speeder, and you’ll find any out of town trip a laborious chore.

In town, the engines are hushed and the suspension is squishy enough to soak up bumps, but don’t expect any great handling finesse. What hampers the Hyundai i800 in the city is its size, which can make finding a parking spot a tough challenge.

There are an eyebrow-raisingly large number of eight-seat MPV options out there, including the excellent Volkswagen Transporter Shuttle. It’s not cheap, but it’s very well made and comfortable.

You could also look at the Citroen SpaceTourer and Peugeot Traveller that are the same vehicle just with different badges. Like the Hyundai, they’re van-based but hide it well. The Toyota Proace Verso doesn’t mask its van origins quite as well, but it’s strong on quality and decent for comfort.

Other to consider are the classy but expensive Mercedes V-Class and the Ford Tourneo Custom that’s one of the best to drive in this sector. 

The Hyundai i800 hails from a time when Hyundai was still relying on a value for money proposition rather than the high quality and badge appeal it has built up to now. As a consequence, the Hyundai i800’s cabin belies its van origins all to readily with the swathes of hard, easily scratched plastics. There’s no doubt they are durable in everyday use, but just don’t expect them to stay looking pristine for very long in normal duties.

This feeling of the car being built down to a budget can be felt throughout the cabin. However, even if the materials are not particularly enticing to look at or feel, they are well put together, so you should not experience much in the way of squeaks and creaks from the Hyundai i800’s interior.

Another plus for the Hyundai i800 over some of its eight-seat van-derived rivals is the cabin feels more like a hatch’s than a van with windows. All of the surfaces are covered with trim and there is no bare metal, so you do feel this is a big car rather than a commercial vehicle with some seats bolted into the back.

Infotainment might be stretching the limits of what’s on offer in the Hyundai i800 as the car pre-dates the modern trend for large touchscreen displays. With the SE and Style models, you get a small digital screen to show the simplest of information about which radio station you are listening to. There’s also a CD player with slot for the disc just above the radio panel that’s integrated into the central dash console.

Choose the Hyundai i800 SE Nav and, as the name tells us, you get built-in satellite navigation. This comes with a larger screen for a clearer view of the map and instructions. However, it feels very dated by modern standards and there’s no ability to pair the screen with your phone to access or music.

Whichever Hyundai i800 model you find yourself driving, you will find the centrally-mounted stereo is a bit of a reach from the driver’s seat. It means you have to lean forward to get to the buttons, though some models have steering wheel-mounted buttons to work the radio. Thankfully, Bluetooth is common on most i800s, so at least you have the chance to make hands-free phone calls.

Space may be the final frontier, but it’s not the be all and end all of MPVs. It’s how you use that space to best effect that determines whether or not a people carrier is the outright best in its class. In this respect, the Hyundai i800 falls some way short of fulfilling its massive potential.

The reason for this is the way the rear seats are arranged and fixed in position. The second and third rows of seats both have three chairs, so fitting in eight people is, theoretically, very simple. The problems begin with the rear-most row of seats being solidly fixed in position rather than having a sliding base as you find in the likes of the Volkswagen Transporter Shuttle. It results in the third row occupants often having to sacrifice their knee room so those in the middle pews can sit comfortably.

Next issue is none of the Hyundai i800’s two rear rows of seats can be folded flat into the floor. Instead, you end up with a seat backs that tip forwards to free up a lot of length for longer loads, but not nearly as much depth in the cargo bay as you might want. So, the Hyundai i800 is very much a people carrier rather than a multi-purpose vehicle. However, we should state that all occupants get a three-point seat belt, so it’s no problem with giving half the football team a lift to the match.

The flipside of this is the Hyundai i800 always offers a large luggage space even when all eight seats are filled. Lift the large tailgate and you’re presented with 851-litres of load carrying capacity, which is blessed with no interruptions from the sides of floor, so it’s a doddle to slide in even the heaviest suitcase when picking up relatives from the airport. However, that’s about as clever as the Hyundai i800’s load bay gets, so don’t go looking for clever hidden storage areas or load dividers because they aren’t there.

The Hyundai i800 dimensions are 5150mm long, 1920mm wide and 1925mm tall.

You have two choices when it comes to the engine and the gearbox respectively in the Hyundai i800, though you cannot mix and match them. So, if you want the 136PS lower-powered version of the 2.5-litre four-cylinder turbodiesel engine, you get a manual gearbox and that’s your lot.

With earlier Hyundai i800s, this meant a five-speed manual transmission, but from mid-2013 this was upgraded to a six-speeder. The later ’box is the one to aim for as it makes the 136PS engine a little more flexible, though it still feels very sluggish when getting up to speed out of town and on the motorway. Around the city, it’s acceptable, but you will soon learn to give best to almost everyone else when pulling away from traffic lights.

A much better, swifter bet is the 170PS 2.5-litre turbodiesel, though this is more relative to its 136PS sister than most of its rivals that are noticeably quicker off the mark and through the gears. It comes with a five-speed automatic gearbox as the only way to change ratios.

For those looking to tow a caravan or trailer with the Hyundai i800, the manual gearbox model is the one to choose as it has a maximum braked trailer capacity of 2300kg compared to the 1500kg of the Hyundai i800 with a manual gearbox. Despite this, we’d take the smoother automatic and its punchier engine to have some power in reserve for overtaking and motorway cruising.

The Hyundai i800 may be a car with its roots back in 2008 when it was launched, but it still puts in a good account of itself for the hush of its cabin. In either power configuration, the turbodiesel engine doesn’t become intrusive or too loud when worked hard, which is not always the case with larger capacity four-cylinder diesels.

Hyundai has also pulled off a good job of isolating road noise from the Hyundai i800’s interior. This is another welcome trait as many van-based MPVs can suffer from reverberation where insufficient sound-proofing has been used. In the Hyundai i800, it’s quite and wind noise is not a particularly obvious until up to motorway pace where the large door mirrors generate some whirr and whistle.

From the driver’s seat, the foot pedals all work with consistent feel and the brakes are strong, which is just as well for a car that carry up to eight plus luggage. The automatic gearbox is smooth enough not to be noticeable in most driving situations, but the manual box’s lever has a vague, sloppy action that deters using it unless strictly necessary.

For a car with moving people in large numbers as its main selling point, the Hyundai i800 falls short on looking after them in the event of a collision. Only the driver and front passenger get an airbag and there are no side or curtain ’bags. This is a consequence of the Hyundai i800’s age and van origins as many of its rivals offer these vital safety aids.

You do get ABS anti-lock brakes and ESP traction and stability control, so the Hyundai i800 will keep you going in a straight line even when the road is slippery.

It also has ISOFIX child seat mounting points in the two outer seats of the middle row, as well as three-point belts for all eight occupants.

The Hyundai i800 has not been tested by Euro NCAP, but Hyundai’s identical H-1 people carrier has been and it scored a fairly desultory three-star result in 2012. That was achieved with a 55 per cent adult occupancy score and 75 per cent for child passenger safety. It’s worth noting that Euro NCAP crash tests are more stringent now, so the Hyundai would fare less well in today’s testing regime.

The Hyundai i800 scored a middling 9.00 out of 10 for reliability in the HonestJohn.co.uk Satisfaction Survey, which is actually the lowest rating of any Hyundai that appeared in the survey. This is partly down to the fact that it is also one of the oldest designs, but given that the reliability of Hyundais is strong in general you should have few concerns when purchasing a used example.

As a brand Hyundai took the bronze medal, finishing just behind Lexus in second and Dacia in first.

The least expensive Hyundai i800 to get insurance cover for is the less powerful of the two turbodiesel versions with its 136PS. In basic Style trim, it falls into group 28, though some later models crept up into group 30.

Take the 170PS version of the Hyundai i800 and you’ll be paying your annual premium based on an insurance ranking of group 33 or 35 depending the exact specification of the car. This is higher than you will find with a comparable Ford Galaxy.

Hyundai i800s registered from 1 April 2017 onwards will pay road tax at a flat rate of £165 per year regardless of which engine is fitted to the car.

For Hyundai i800s registered before this date, the 136PS model falls into Band J due to its 197g/km carbon dioxide emissions and that means paying out £330 per year for road tax. Choose the 170PS version with its 244g/km CO2 emissions and you’ll be paying the annual tax at a hefty £615.

The Hyundai i800 Style trim was the entry point to the Hyundai i800 range and came with alloy wheels, two-tone paint scheme, rear privacy glass, and parking sensors at the back. It also has a heated driver’s seat, air conditioning and an onboard trip meter for fuel economy.

When Hyundai added the 136PS engine, it also offered a more basic Hyundai i800 Comfort model that did without the Style’s rear privacy glass, parking sensors or auto dimming rear view mirror. It also missed out on the two-tone paint.

The Hyundai i800 SE model replaced the Style and offered the same level of equipment, while the SE Nav came with integrated satellite navigation and a larger screen in the centre console. SE models have a multi-function steering wheel with remote buttons for the stereo.

Hyundai offered very few options for the Hyundai i800, so customers were limited to a choice of upgrading with metallic paint and half-leather upholstery.