car&bike Awards 2025: Hyundai Alcazar Facelift Wins Car Upgrade Of The Year

The Hyundai Alcazar facelift is the 2025 car&bike Car Upgrade Of The Year. The latest iteration of the Alcazar was launched in September 2024, and is a major improvement over its predecessor especially in terms of second-row comfort. The Alcazar facelift's competition for the award included the Citroen C3 Aircross, Hyundai Creta Facelift, Jeep Meridian, Tata Altroz Racer, and Kia Sonet facelift.

With the facelift, the Alcazar facelift received a design in line with the Creta facelift, with its split, vertically-stacked headlights and large rectangular grille. The headlamp clusters house H-shaped LED DRL units, and the SUV now gets a faux skid plate element below. The rear, meanwhile, comes with new vertically oriented tail lamps connected by a full-width lightbar. Down below, the SUV gets a new more squared-up bumper with a prominent skid-plate element and the twin-exit exhaust finisher.

On the inside, the Alcazar comes with a 10.25-inch touchscreen and an all-digital driver’s display with integrated navigation, panoramic sunroof, ambient lighting, rain-sensing wipers, rear blinds, sequential turn-indicators, voice commands which also support regional languages, 8-speaker Bose sound system, dual-zone climate control, paddle shifters, and Hyundai’s Bluelink connected car tech.

The SUV gets two engine options, both available with an automatic transmission. You get the 1.5-litre turbo-petrol T-GDI engine, which has an output of 158 bhp and 253 Nm and can be had with a six-speed manual or a seven-speed DCT automatic. Meanwhile, the oil burner is a 1.5-litre U2 CRDi producing 114 bhp and 250 Nm which is available with a six-speed manual as standard or a six-speed torque converter automatic.