2026 Hyundai Venue -- Is America's Most Affordable Car Any Good??

What's going on YouTube? So it's really hard to find a new car that starts around $20,000 because practically all of them in the US have been discontinued over the past few years. But not all of them because now this 2026 Hyundai Venue is now the most affordable new car in the US. But is it any good? And should you buy one? Well, let's go ahead and find out. All right, so let's start out under the hood. So the Venue keeps it pretty simple. We just have a 1.6 liter four-cylinder engine making 121 horsepower. It's paired to a continuously variable transmission. Power is routed to the front wheels only and the combined fuel economy is 31 mpg. Now the base price of the Venue for this year is $20,550. And if you're looking to buy one or any new vehicle, we would encourage you to go to carconfections.com slash new car quotes to get the best price. But just because this model is affordable doesn't mean it's not well equipped. Let's go ahead and dive into the exterior as well as the interior details. Now one of the nice things about the Venue is that you still get a pretty stylish package even at this affordable price tag. And that is even more true for 2026. Now this year they've gotten rid of the top-end limited trim. That's gone. In its place, we have the SEL with the two-tone roof. That's what we have today. That's going to give you a lot of the style from the previous limited but at a more affordable price tag. Even with destination, this model is still under $25,000. Now up here in the front, what do you get? That signature Hyundai grille. Just kind of this simple triangle shape. You also have just a simple lower fascia with some white accents which match with the roof we'll be talking about in just a second. As far as the lighting, we don't have LED headlights unfortunately. But of course this is a very affordable vehicle. We have a projector halogen headlight for your low and high beam. And then you have the incandescent daytime running light and turn signal indicator up here at the top. As we continue on to the back, it has that boxy shape which of course is pretty popular these days. Yeah, I think it looks pretty good overall and let's go ahead and break down some of those individual elements. So you will have a spoiler kind of molded into the roofline up here at the top as well as an exposed rear wiper. And let's go ahead and check out the taillights themselves. Now we'll say this unit is not going to be LED at all. So that means you'll have a incandescent brake light turn signal as well as your reverse light down there in the bottom. And as far as your other elements, you have a white accented Venue branding here for this model as well as a white accent down here on the bumper. This model is not rated to tow. Next up we have the wheels which are either 15-inch alloys or these 17-inch alloys. This contrast design I think looks quite nice on board. And then you have a little bit of cladding around here and accenting at the top. Turn signal indicator right there. And then we've got the white finish to match with the roof once again. You have blind spot monitoring standard on the SEL and new for 2026 that also adds in heating. Now headed to the side, the overall vehicle length is about 159.1 inches long which is going to be quite short for the subcompact segment. And as far as some individual design elements, this is where you're going to get a lot more style than you might expect for the price. Your window treatments will be blacked out and then up here at the top you'll also have some silver accented roof rails. But like Drew said at the beginning, this is the SEL with two-tone roof, so you got to have a two-tone roof. And this is the white roof paired with the denim paint today. There are two other colors that you can also get with a two-tone roof, but that will change the color to black instead of white. I really quite like this look and I think it stands out quite a bit in today's auto market. Now as far as your safety is concerned, you're only going to have three out of your four active safety features as standard equipment and available on this venue. It does not offer adaptive cruise control, though you do have a standard version of cruise control available. But let's go ahead and dive into the interior of this affordable model. But first, if you're new here, we're brothers and we've been reviewing cars since we were 12 and 16. We started young and since then we've reviewed over 2,000 cars at every price point. No matter what you're looking for, from our long-term vehicle videos to our side-by-side comparisons, we'd love for you to subscribe to be a part of our car confections family. Let's learn a lot and have some fun with all the latest cars. Now on to the interior. First, here is our key fob. It's kind of the older design Hyundai key fob, but honestly it's really high quality, very nice key fob. You have smart entry on the SEL trim level and we also have remote start. Getting inside, just press the black button there, that will unlock the door. Then let's open it up and check out the blue interior. That's right, we actually have a denim blue interior to match with the exterior. It's one of the cool aspects of choosing the two-tone finish that we have on the outside and they really went all in, kind of like a almost luxury vehicle. They went ahead and dyed all the plastics and also the seats and all the main elements to be denim blue. Now as far as the materials are concerned, you'll always have a mostly cloth seat no matter which trim you choose. This version, as you can see, comes with the leatherette on the outside edge with the white color contrast piping and stitching. The seats are also pretty comfortable for the price point, but they'll always be six-way manual adjusting. Let's go ahead and climb inside. Now closing up the door, we have to look around at the cabin quality overall. So over here on the door trim, we have a very small area of leatherette, which is your armrest, kind of padded. The rest of it is going to be a hard touch plastic as we move to the upper dashboard. As expected for the price, this is a hard touch plastic, but with a nice texture to it through here as well as along the bottom. The thing that's noteworthy though is not the fact that it's hard touch plastic, but that everything does feel solid and fits together nicely with no obvious panel gaps. And we'll fire it up with the push button start. With it fired up, let's get into some individual details about what you get in this vehicle. We'll start with the gauge cluster. We have a digital gauge cluster. The center part is reconfigurable with different types of information and then the other part is just the digital instrumentation. Now as we pull back to the steering wheel, if you get the SEL trim level, that will give you a leatherette wrapped steering wheel. You can see it's in the matching denim blue with the stitching detail. It's manual tilt and telescoping. Now obviously this is a fairly small SUV, but let's check the interior storage to see how good it is. Inside of our center console, we put our signature donuts inside and today we have six donuts inside of here. So it's going to be on the smaller side of course, but there is some additional storage as we move forward from that, including our two cup holders. This storage cubby right here which contains a new wireless phone charging pad for 2026 on the SEL trims. And then up here you have the passenger storage shelf. We've got a physical shifter right here in the middle. Pull back for drive. Bump over here to the left if you want to go through some manual shift simulations. And then we head into reverse. There's our backup camera. As you can see we do have active trajectory on board as well as distance markers. And just be aware the resolution is going to be on the low side for sure. And then back behind that you have your handbrake style parking brake. This is also a good time to draw attention right here to the center section. Well of course we got the drive mode controller, but what's more important is what's on both sides of that. That's the fact that we have new heated seats to the SEL trim levels for 2026. That's certainly a feature I hear a lot of people are looking for even at the affordable price point. Now let's rise above here and go to the climate controls. We've got a single zone automatic climate control set up. So you actually just adjust your temperature right here. You're going to see that displayed in this little round area. This isn't actually a dial, it's just a display. And then you have your fan speeds over here on the side. You also have physical controls for the audio. This is going to come with a six speaker sound system and we'll go ahead and give that a sample. So overall sound quality is certainly going to be on the weaker side of things. You really have to crank it up to get you know decent sound. But if you're not really into audio this probably isn't going to be something that you would miss. Now another thing to point out is our main infotainment screen. So first the highlights. It does come with wireless android auto and apple carplay. So I think those are features a lot of people are really really going to be interested in and they do work quite well. Now this is going to be on the smaller side. It's an eight inch display. It's also you know rather grainy and doesn't have a lot of additional features beyond the wireless android auto and apple carplay. So if you're comparing to say the tracks that is going to give you a lot better of a technology experience overall than this vehicle at the same price point. Now up here at the top we have the manual dimming mirror and then as you can see we do not have a sunroof. It is actually offered on the SEL trim but you cannot combine it with the two-tone roof. All right so let's hop into the rear seats of this venue and let's start out with your measured leg and the headroom figures. You'll be staying at about 34.3 inches of legroom and about 38.6 inches of headroom. While the legroom is lacking the headroom is actually pretty good especially since this does have more of that boxy shape but I did also bring a ruler along with me to get a realistic knee room figure behind Drew's five foot eight driving position. I am five foot nine. I'm still sitting at about six inches of additional knee room which isn't bad at all and my feet have a lot of room to slide up underneath the seat in front of me. Speaking of these seats they don't recline but overall they're really pretty comfortable have a lot of give. They're just as comfortable as the front seats I'd be willing to say. Now as far as your features go you do not have a center fold down armrest with any cup holders inside but never fear Hyundai has a solution for that. For $70 you can buy an accessory rear cup holder so if you don't have someone in this middle rear seat all you have to do is just kind of kind of push it down here into the center and then you have two cup holders here. So sometimes certain problems need clever solutions and Hyundai did just that. While you're down here you can also look at the two USB-C ports that are included on this model. That's not a given even in some luxury cars so I am happy to see that. No vents no heated rear seats or anything else like that and as far as the door trim is concerned it's pretty much going to be hard touch from top to bottom though you do have a small slither of leatherette wrapping for your armrest portion and a little bit of door storage down in the bottom. Now for the cargo space as you'd probably expect you do have a manual take manual tailgate on all models and once you pop that open you will be greeted by 18.9 cubic feet of space behind the second row of seats and as a maximum it will be a total of 31.9 cubic feet of space. So once again as associated with a shorter model for this segment that is not going to be a ton of cargo capacity but it will be more if you're cross-shopping say compared to a sedan or something like that but if you're cross-shopping with things like a Honda HR-V it's definitely going to be a lot less. Speaking of all of the competitors in this segment we would encourage you to go to carconfections.com slash vehicle rankings. On there we've gone through some of the most popular segments in the industry and ranked them based on the categories that matter most to you the compact crossover buyer. Whether that be things such as cargo space, interior technology, powertrain options, value and more you can go on there and sort them based on what's most important to you. So be sure to check that out at carconfections.com slash vehicle rankings. Now as far as folding the seats down they do fold 60-40 split which is not a given either and it's easy enough just to reach forward and push them down and there you go you can see that maximum almost 32 cubic feet of cargo space. Let me go and get our length width and height figures behind Drew's 5.8 driving position. I'm sitting at about 58 inches of overall length behind the second row 26 inches. For the width we'll be sitting at around 37 inches which is pretty respectable and for your height at its maximum it will be around 31 inches which is also pretty impressive. Really what hurts this car the most is the length and for your load-in height be sitting at about 30 inches. Now underneath the floor I will pop that up and that will reveal a pretty big pit as well as a spare tire. All right here we are behind the wheel of the 2026 Hyundai Venue and this test drive will be covering quite a few different things as you can see on the screen right now including getting things like your sound level reading but first let's go ahead and start out with a hard acceleration. All right there we go to 60 miles per hour with the Hyundai Venue. So like we mentioned at the beginning in the spec dump this has a pretty small motor under the hood it's a 1.6 liter naturally aspirated four-cylinder engine has 121 horsepower and 113 pound-feet of torque so of course those are not going to be huge numbers. This is a very small SUV though so one of the things is that the overall acceleration is not as bad as you would expect 8.5 seconds to 60 miles per hour so there are definitely some rivals that are a little bit bigger heavier and more expensive that are actually slower than this such as the Honda HR-V. That being said it's not going to impress you or win any drag races. Yeah for sure but I really do think this will be good for daily commutes getting you around town if you need to get onto a highway and take a highway ramp I think you're going to be good to go in about 90% of situations so overall not bad the engine doesn't really sound strained either when it's accelerating so that's something that so much of its rivals can't say either. Now as we get back up to speed let's talk about the other elements of the powertrain the transmission. This has a continuously variable transmission as you can hear as I accelerated up the hill there it does have a shift simulation so that kind of just helps it feel a little bit more like a traditional stepped automatic and helps you avoid some of the drone that you might get otherwise. As far as how power is routed to the ground is via the front wheels only and that means you're only going to have one fuel economy rating as well 31 mpg which isn't half bad just keep in mind that there's not a hybrid offered for this model and that is something that more and more of its competitors are offering such as things like the new Kia Seltos. And let's go ahead and get our sound level reading Drew is speeding up to 55 miles per hour I'm going to get us down to fan speed one 61 and a half decibels is what we are sitting at for this Hyundai Venue. Now I don't have to see here and guess how it compares to all of its rivals I'll head to carconfections.com slash sound level readings and yes that is going to be on the louder end of this segment some of its rivals will certainly be quieter. When it comes to the sub compact segment there's like 20 options because the segment is kind of split between the lower tier options and kind of the higher tier more expensive a little bit bigger options this is definitely you know on that most affordable side the smallest side and with that things like the sound level reading are not bad again also that front wheel drive only and not having a hybrid powertrain you do get that in some of the bigger and much more expensive options though because you're looking at many of those like the Corolla Cross Hybrid that's like ten extra thousand dollars over top of this. Yeah and I think even when you look at things like the Honda HR-V this package becomes a little bit more impressive because that HR-V isn't offering a hybrid yet it also is louder when it comes to the sound level readings so I think when you're looking at offerings like that that are closer to the $40,000 price point this is certainly quite impressive. They've tuned the throttle response to be you know kind of on the touchier side so it gets you off the line with a little bit of zest overall. Now let's go ahead and talk about today's slam dunk and air ball. I will start with the slam dunk and that is the value that's offered here and just really the existence of a vehicle at this price point you know this kind of is just going away in general those low $20,000 vehicles are almost non-existent so it's certainly nice that Hyundai offers this and also that they're giving you a good amount of stuff for the money as well. Yeah I completely agree now on the airball side of things I will just mention some of the older elements that you've seen throughout this review today things like the incandescent headlights the smaller low resolution display and some of those other elements it definitely does show this car's age a little bit more and I say that a little nervously that I wish Hyundai would update this car but at the same time when updates like this are typically made they usually get a for this air ball. Now that we're getting back up to speed how is the ride quality for the most affordable crossover in America right now? Well I overall I'd say that we've been pretty impressed with our time with the venue today overall the suspension tuning is pretty soft it's not too stiff and while you do get some bumps let into the cabin we're driving through a really bumpy construction zone right now but overall it's really not jarring I thought it would kind of rattle your teeth a little bit more but between these comfortable seats and the suspension tuning overall and 17 inch wheels on the outside I think that overall makes a pretty appealing package. Yeah and you can even go for the base trim and 15 inches so yeah those are really small wheels. Now kind of the whole point of this review is showcasing the fact that this is the most affordable new car in America right now so what is that price exactly as I mentioned at the very beginning this does start at $20,550 so just a hair over that $20,000 mark and then the other two SEL trim levels will be sitting right around the upper $22,000 mark this is the SEL with two tone roof and that will start at a very reasonable price of $22,600. After you add a few accessories on including $1,600 in destination it was sitting at a fully loaded price essentially of $24,745. Now if you're looking to buy a Hyundai Venue or any new vehicle we would encourage you to go to carconfections.com slash new car quotes on there you can get access to an invoice pricing tool which will help connect you with dealers in your local area to get you the best price you can also access things like a monthly payment tool as well so if you're interested in checking that out be sure to click the link in the video description as well as a pinned comment at the top of this video but what about Hyundai's resale reliability and warranty let's start with resale value after five years and 60,000 miles you can expect this venue to be worth about 55.35% of its original MSRP and after 10 years and 120,000 miles 19.61% now that is going to be lower than some of its Japanese rivals such as Honda and Toyota but will be above the overall industry average. Now we also have reliability information with our combined reliability index with the latest data Hyundai is rated above the overall industry average compared to all other vehicle makes. Now if you'd like to check out all of our resale and reliability information be sure to head to carconfections.com slash resale and carconfections.com slash reliability now as far as your warranty is concerned that's also related to this you will be covered by a five-year 60,000 mile basic warranty a 10-year 100,000 mile powertrain warranty and Hyundai is currently not offering any complimentary maintenance. Well guys we hope you enjoyed this in-depth review of the 2026 Hyundai Venue if you enjoyed watching this review on the most affordable new crossover in America we'd appreciate it if you would subscribe down below when you do that that helps us get access to tons more vehicles to bring to you guys on the channel if you're already a fan and supporter thank you so much for your continued support of the channel and we'll catch you next time as we sample more of the latest automotive delicacies