Why Are We Comparing a 2025 Hyundai Santa Fe with a 1950 Hillman Minx? We Don’t Know, Either
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This is a story of a scientist who just turned 90: my fun father-in-law, Gus. It’s also a cheeky but fulsome car comparison, useful to anyone stuck choosing between a top-of-the-line 2025 Hyundai Santa Fe and an off-the-line 1950 Hillman Minx Mark IV (which stands for the number four, kids, not intravenous).
Why? In early 1950s rural Scotland, Gus learned to drive on his Aunty Betty’s car, the mighty Hillman Minx. Then, when four of his 2020s Scottish relatives flew over to celebrate that milestone birthday recently, we ferried them around in the vast Santa Fe, which seats seven in almost any trim.
So, this is a circle-of-life experience.
Time starved? buckle up because here’s the shocking conclusion: The Santa Fe is better than the Minx. On the other hand, you could buy the 1950 Hillman Minx with 523 guineas and a few pence. That’s 550 pounds in the new money.
Good news: You’re moving one degree of separation closer to King Charles III. (So-so news: also Prince Andrew.)
A teacher, Gus’s Aunty Betty lived all her life with his grandparents in the village of Glamis — pronounced glamz, not how you thought — nestled beside Glamis (also glamz) Castle.
Never heard of the 653-year-old Glamis Castle? It’s where the Queen Mother Elizabeth was born and raised before getting married and podding out the new Queen Elizabeth you’ve seen all your life on Canadian money. Less famously, the pre-married Queen Mum had been the Girl Guide Leader of Gus’s own mum and Aunty Betty. (Clearly, Betty — aka Elizabeth — was a popular name.)
Did you feel that frisson? You’re one degree of separation closer to the King.
Gus remembers well how his grandfather was Head Forester on the Strathmore Estates (lands surrounding Glamis Castle). He oversaw the tens of thousands of acres of woodlands, their maintenance, nurseries, populations of animals etc. Being the Head Forester’s daughter, Betty “had some (informal) rights to use the drives leading to and from the castle, which had virtually no traffic on them.”
So, there wasn’t much chance of a collision. Indeed, this was long before the British aristocracy allowed icky commoners like us on their grounds for a few hours each week. If you do visit now, don’t boast of your newfound two degrees of separation from the current laird. They shan’t be impressed.
Active safety and security features: Advantage, Hyundai; honourable mention, Hillman.
If you’re considering an SUV so big that it seats seven, safety features likely matter to you. Just consider all the ways you could collide with or be hit by others once you drive off your own private barony.
Luckily, every trim of the Santa Fe comes with such safety technologies as lane-keeping assist and adaptive cruise control with stop-and-go capability. The car sees what’s beside and ahead of you, then adjusts its speed, perhaps even stopping before you drive into a solid object. There’s also collision avoidance assist, which prevents you from hitting cyclists, pedestrians, and other unexpected annoyances, like highland sheep.
Speed limit assist is especially useful if you drive in a cash-strapped city that’s recently installed floating speed cameras.
Every vehicle owner wants to protect their devaluing asset’s exterior from unsightly scratches. They often happen when parking, and the Santa Fe deserves its own postal code, it’s so big. So, the Ultimate Calligraphy trim exclusively adds 360-degree parking distance warning, forward attention warning, surround view monitor, remote smart, parking assist, and highway driving assist.
The Minx was just over 13 by 5 feet. During school holidays, Gus would visit Glamis with his parents and take lessons from Aunty Betty on Strathmore Estates’ traffic-free private drives with virtually nothing to hit, be hit or scratched by — not even an occasional horse and buggy being filmed for Jane Austen adaptations.
Even if Aunty Betty had permitted Gus to take the Minx on public roads, there wasn’t a lot there to hit there either, beyond the aforementioned sheep.
Cars were still fairly uncommon in early 1950s Britain. During the Second World War (1939-1945), people couldn’t buy cars at all. Many years after victory, most were still too broke to afford them. It was a time of lean austerity.
Which is good because the Minx’s safety features included rearview mirrors and brakes. Mind, unlike modern cars lit and soundtracked more like a casino than the 1950 Minx, nothing lit from the dashboard beyond the red-hot coil for your cigarettes.
So, you may as well watch what’s on the windscreen.
Access for seniors (and juniors): Technical tie; slight advantage Hyundai.
Access to the backseats in a two-door compact was even less elegant in the 1950s than today. To the best of Gus’s recollection, which is superb despite the number of candles on his birthday cake, Aunty Betty’s Hillman Minx was a hardtop four-door saloon (meaning sedan, not tavern).
He’s sure it must’ve been a four-door because Betty regularly chauffeured Gus’ aged grandparents around town and country and doesn’t recall them having any trouble boarding or exiting the Minx. Trust the memory. Gus’ scientific specialty, his lifework, has been observing the effects of aging on memory.
Picking up Gus’s middle- and vintage-aged relatives from the airport, the Santa Fe did offer what modern car reviewers euphemistically refer to as ingress and egress challenges or benefits — depending on how deep into the vehicle you’re venturing. The Calligraphy’s middle bucket seats slide forth and back on a track, allowing access to the third row, which can be flattened if you’re not stuffing cousins back there. The rear bench seats two, offering minimal leg space for adults, but plenty of room for child seats. Cousin Dave is tall and retired but still considered the middle generation, young enough to waddle his way to the very back where, after a seven-hour plane ride, he rested his chin on his knees while experiencing Toronto’s legendary traffic in slowest motion.
Speaking of which, we mentioned the Santa Fe seats seven. But if you’re buying the top-of-the-line Ultimate Calligraphy, check whether it comes with two bucket seats in the middle rather than a three-seater bench between the front and back rows.
Bottom line? This tester seated six (four most comfortably) with its six seatbelts, leaving us, two days later, with the Sophie’s Choice of which adult daughter’s life to risk on the 115-km trip to the country inn and spa where we hosted Gus’ internationally attended birthday party.
Mind, the Hillman boasted a total of zero seatbelts, so every choice Aunty Betty made behind the wheel and in front of the parents would’ve been risky, potentially lethal.
User-friendliness: Two points to Hyundai, but one to Hillman.
Like most North American cars, the Santa Fe features an automatic transmission. You can paddle between gears, but why bother? Ask anyone (especially me): Shifting with paddles or buttons is the automotive equivalent of seeing a live concert online. Meh. Instead, you can just push start and go on the accelerator.
Massive digitally labelled and touch-sensitive icons on a wide, elegantly curved screen cosset the driver, visually proclaiming myriad adjustments you can summon to render your ride somehow better — whether that’s learning the weather, manipulating your seat to accommodate your scoliosis, or hearing your favourite podcasts through Apple CarPlay. This is a rolling suburban living room.
And the Minx? Its infotainment system was a window you’d roll down to talk to the neighbours while rolling by. And the very phrase “podcasts through Apple CarPlay” would’ve sounded like some unsolvable Times of London crossword hint.
Beneath the hood, the Minx’s standard transmission boasted four forward gears and reverse for Gus to chunkily shift between. Strathmore Estates, though 14,500 acres and not all that far from the highlands, is quite flat. A good thing because Gus, like anyone who drove a clutching/shifting car before the days of hill-start tech, found starting on hills most challenging.
Later, Gus completed his lessons in Edinburgh, a city built on an extinct volcano and rutted lowlands. If you’re not standing still anywhere in Edinburgh, you’re either moving up or down. And over holidays from university, he had a summer job driving a lorry around the highlands. So, he mastered hill starts soon enough.
A final user-friendliness point: A simple machine is easier to fix when something goes wrong. And there was little to go wrong with the Minx. Mechanics didn’t need to become NASA-level hackers to change the oil.
Power: Advantage Hyundai, but … context.
The Santa Fe’s Ultimate Calligraphy trim boasts a four-cylinder 2.5-litre turbocharged engine, significantly more robust than the 1.6-litre turbo in the entry-level Santa Fe. Nonetheless, even that base model dragging an elephant in reverse would outrace the Minx.
Indeed, while the Hyundai may suffer a whiff of turbo lag, the Minx simply bestowed lag. Gus wasn’t taking notes while taking lessons but, despite that dependable memory, doesn’t recall going fast. Wikipedia says its engine achieved a genteel 35 bhp — that’s 34.5 hp in the new horsepower — and “could accelerate from zero to 60 mph [97 km/h] in 39.7 seconds.”
At which point it’d sound better for Wiki to simply say it “could accelerate from zero to 60 mph” with no need to clarify how long it took.
But did that lack of power matter?
Gus remembers generations before his being suspicious of any car faster than the average horse, about 30 mph (48 km/h). Speeds of 35 mph (56 km/h) were unnecessary; 40 (64 km/h) was reckless; 50 (80 km/h) was dangerous.
And just who would want to live in a world where you could tip the needle at 60 mph after just 39.7 head-snapping seconds?
Luckily for my wife, children, and self, I can name at least one 90-year-old birthday boy who did.
