United States' favorite Hyundai to get world premiere in New York on Oct. 1

An iconic car that carried Hyundai Motor into the ranks of the world's three largest automakers is, without question, the Tucson, a compact SUV that draws 91 percent of its sales from abroad. 

Now, six years after its last redesign, Hyundai's best-seller is returning with a new look and its sights set firmly on U.S. buyers.

Hyundai will unveil the fully redesigned Tucson on Oct. 1 in Long Island City, New York, the first time the model has made its world debut in the United States. Gasoline and hybrid versions will hit U.S. and European roads starting in 2027.

The new Tucson is a near-total reinvention, trading the sculpted curves of its predecessor for the upright, boxy profile of a traditional SUV with a considerably bigger body.

First launched in 2004, a total of 10.6 million Tucsons were sold through August of this year, making it only the third model in Hyundai's history to pass the 10 million mark after the Elantra and the Accent, and the first SUV ever to do so.

The Tucson has been Hyundai's best-selling model every year from 2021 to 2025, with overseas markets accounting for 90.9 percent of its sales.

Nowhere has the Tucson's growth depended more on a single market than in the United States. Since arriving there in 2004, the model has sold 2.23 million units, or 19.9 percent of its global total and 23.1 percent of its overseas sales.

This means roughly one in every four or five Tucsons sold outside Korea ends up in a driveway in the United States.

Hybrids are also claiming a fast-growing share. Since the fourth-generation model introduced a hybrid version in 2021, its portion of Tucson sales has climbed from 12.3 percent that year to 31 percent in 2025.

Much of the Tucson's global rise traces back to production spanning the United States, the Czech Republic, China and Korea. In 2005, only 4 percent of Tucsons sold abroad were built in Hyundai's overseas plants, with nearly all the rest exported from Korea.

That share rose to 44.2 percent in 2010 and 73.1 percent in 2016, reaching 76 percent in 2023.

BY SARAH CHEA   [[email protected]]