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Hyundai lets loose another Super Bowl ad

Another day, another Super Bowl ad from Hyundai. The automaker is planning to show off five spots during the big game, and seems hell-bent on trotting each one out ahead of time to garner the most amount of attention possible. We've already seen three of the ads, and the latest follows one young boy as he amasses a football team to take on a bully. His selections range from a set of body-building twins to a bear wrestler and a freakishly strong good Samaritan. The spot is intended to show off exactly what sort of uses you could come up with for the seven-passenger Santa Fe.
We understand Hyundai's push to roll out its ads ahead of time. Estimations from previous years indicate previewing Super Bowl ads can increase viewership by as much as 700 percent, but there's little call for this slow walk out. The company still has one more spot to show off, and we won't exactly be holding our breath. You can check out the latest ad below as well as the most recent press release.

Hyundai mulling new small CUV under Tucson

Hyundai maintains it can barely build enough of its core models to satisfy North American consumers, but that doesn't mean it isn't keen to expand its offerings to capture developing segments of the market. According to Edmunds, one of those expanding niches could be the burgeoning subcompact crossover segment. The website quotes Hyundai North America president and CEO John Krafcik as acknowledging his company is "very under-represented" in crossovers, the market's hottest vehicle type.
With the discontinuation of the Veracruz, Hyundai is down to two CUV nameplates, Tucson (pictured) and Santa Fe, the latter of which covers two segments with a two-row Sport and long-wheelbase three-row model. And while Hyundai commands seven percent of the US sedan market, the company estimates it only has two percent of the truck segment.
And while Krafcik stops short of confirming a new model, he acknowledges "a new segment is emerging" underneath the Tucson and says, "I think it's something to look at." At the moment, the subcompact softroader segment remains small and somewhat amorphous, with tiny CUV offerings like the Buick Encore, Nissan Juke, and now-discontinued Suzuki SX4 illustrating that there are a lot of different ways to package and market such a vehicle.

Hyundai testing Sprinter-style commercial van

Commercial vehicle sales are a key component to the success of many automakers, and in its persistent drive to become one of the largest in the world, it's a segment Hyundai can't very well ignore. But while it offers the i800 and H-series vans overseas, it hasn't offered anything bigger than a Tucson or Santa Fe in North America since the demise of the Entourage and Veracruz. That could all change in the near future, however, if these latest spy shots are anything to go by.
Pictured undergoing testing in Europe, this Hyundai commercial van prototype looks to be about the size of a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter or Ram ProMaster. There's little we can tell from these disguised spy shots at the moment, other than to note that this Hyundai is big and has small wheels, in typical European van style. We can't even tell if this is front-, rear- or all-wheel drive.
Of course, we have no indication at this point whether the van pictured here will make the transatlantic voyage to American showrooms. But with Mercedes having led the Euro van charge with the aforementioned Sprinter, and with the likes of Ford, Ram and Nissan all following suit, it seems possible. However, between the upgrades to service departments often necessary to accommodate such large vehicles and the sales retraining necessary to court commercial truck customers, doing so wouldn't simply be a plug-and-play operation - it would undoubtedly take a great deal of effort and money.