The Hyundai Staria Kinder is a 15-seat, space-age school bus

By topgear, 13 October 2021

The Hyundai Staria Kinder is a 15-seat, space-age school bus

Earlier this year, we cooed over Hyundai’s rekindling of the people carrier – the space-age Staria. Well now it’s taken people moving to its apparent zenith, short of assuming the role of an actual double-decker bus. This is the Hyundai Staria Kinder.

Which doesn’t mean it’s made of chocolate and houses a toy destined for three hours on the kitchen counter then the bin. Rather ‘Kinder’ means ‘children’ in German – which does rather terrifyingly make a Kinder Egg a Children Egg, but we digress – and this particularly Staria is geared up to shuttle an absolute gaggle of them to school. Hence the yellow paint job.

There will be 11- or 15-seater versions – just one short of the 16-person capacity of this mad Rocket Car – and it comes stacked to the gunnels with safety features, such as rear cross traffic alert, to keep things as safe and pain-free as possible at the school gate.

There’s no word on what powers it, but we’d suspect regular internal combustion for starters but with an emissions-free option further down the line to keep the air hurtling down its target audience’s necks clean.

It’s on sale in South Korea, prices starting at the equivalent of £22,000 (RM124k). Which isn’t an awful lot for a car – nay bus – with such carrying capacity. The Staria also comes in regular people-carrying and panel van form, and we’re promised a camping version too.