News Roundup: The 2024 Hyundai Sonata, a $10M vehicle-theft ring, and Tesla’s bad yoke

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Welcome to our round-up of the biggest breaking stories on Driving.ca from this past week. Get caught up and ready to get on with the weekend, because it’s hard keeping pace in a digital traffic jam.

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Here’s what you missed while you were away.

Hyundai shows off handsome new 2024 Hyundai Sonata

The Hyundai Sonata received a makeover this year, and the first batch of images suggest it’s looking quite fine indeed. Mechanical upgrades weren’t noted, but the visuals of the “aero-friendly exterior design” display the sedan’s new styling called “The Sportiness.” Highlights include the front horizontal lamps and hidden headlights, new taillights, and a reworked hood — but you’ve really got to see the whole car to appreciate the significance of the upgrade. 

Things are perhaps a bit more familiar inside in terms of layout, but added premium materials bring a new level of class. And Hyundai has embraced the curved display trend, in this case with a 12.3-inch instrument cluster and 12.3-inch infotainment screen. Guests at the Seoul Mobility Show are getting the first look at the new Sonata in the flesh right now before it goes on sale worldwide. 

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Peel police nab car thieves sitting on $10M of stolen vehicles

Peel Regional Police have arrested a number of individuals and seized 78 vehicles worth a combined $10 million in a sting operation called “Project R&R.” The Range Rover was the most common nameplate in the bunch, and apparently a bunch of the vehicles were pinched from presumably safe spaces like lots at Pearson International Airport in Toronto and underground parking garages. 

The arrests are a sign of the police system hard at work, but thieves are also progressing in their strategies. And Canada may be viewed as a honeypot by some. “Canada has been a bit of a free-for-all, but this is a very strong statement that active law enforcement agencies have taken a big step,” said Bryan Gast, Vice-President of Investigations with Equite Association, which worked with police during the sting. 

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Police have laid 34 charges on four individuals and say there are more to come. 

Bad yoke: Tesla store sells out of replacement wheels for steering yoke

Tesla is one of those brands that moves fast. Elon waits for nobody. He’s got the money, and he executes on the ideas. But not all of the EV company’s ideas are hits. Consider the brand’s relatively recent reinvention of the steering wheel. It wasn’t broke, but they decided to ‘fix’ it by supplementing a rectangular yoke-style steering device in its staid. Well, people hated it. 

Tesla did right the course eventually, returning to the steering wheel, but not soon enough. And now those owners who received their Model S or Model X with a yoke are stuck with them, because the online Tesla store has completely sold out of the US$700 replacement wheels. Yoke is on them, unfortunately, at least until Tesla restocks the store. 

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Harley-Davidson has crated its most powerful v-twin engine

If you’ve seen the wildness that is the King of the Baggers moto series and believe that level of speedy and risky entertainment is for you, good news. You can speed too! Because H-D has pulled the plant out of those motorsport bikes and is offering it as a crate engine. For $10,440, you could be ripping around the local track with the Screamin’ Eagle 135ci Stage IV Performance Crate Engine powering your Harley. The plant makes 130 horsepower and 143 lb-ft of torque, some 41 per cent more horsepower and 28 per cent more torque than the stock Milwaukee-Eight 117 V-twin. Harley suggests you also run with the Screamin’ Eagle Ventilator Extreme air cleaner and a mildly ‘muffled’ Street Cannon exhaust.

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The new crate engine is designed to fit in any touring Harley from 2021 or later. It will not fit in Harley trikes. 

Toyota teases new Tacoma, maybe arriving April 4

It seems like more than just coincidence that the plate numbers on this Tacoma featured on Toyota USA’s recent Instagram post (040423) spell out the day before the media day at the 2023 New York International Auto Show. It seems like a tease before a reveal.

But the post is definitely also a cheeky nod to a leak made by Toyota’s Brazilian faction earlier this year, when Internet sleuths uncovered design drawings of a truck on the patent office’s website and triggered much speculation about the new Tacoma. This new post features a current-model-year Tacoma sitting in front of a building labeled “Brazilian Patent Office,” and accompanied by the caption, “patented good looks.” The image also includes a white truck that is likely the new Tacoma off to the side, but it’s been blurred beyond the point of being able to spot details. If those plate numbers are what we think they are, that image will come into focus in just a few days. Stay tuned. 

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Poking around inside the 2024 Porsche Cayenne

The Taycan set a new bar in terms of digital controls chez Porsche, but the 2024 Cayenne may just clear it. Porsche has double dosed the new SUV with even more screen-ability and fewer buttons than before, plugging in a free-standing 12.6-inch curved display screen that uses anti-glare filters instead of a hood cover, and the option for a 10.9-inch passenger screen for navigation and media. That second screen, which can stream video, has been angled away from the driver so as not to distract them. 

The steering wheel takes design inspiration from the 911, and contains the drive mode dial and instrument cluster display controls inside the wheel. You can get a look at how it all comes together in the new interior here. 

The 2024 Porsche Cayenne will debut in full at the Auto Shanghai Show on April 18, 2023.