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Gearing up for its debut on April 15th, Hyundai has released renderings of the Santa Cruz, its ground-breaking pickup named for a sleepy Northern California beach city.
According to Google Translate, phonetically in Korean, pickup truck is ‘pig-eob teuleog’. In the Korean domestic market, Hyundai has produced the Pony pickup of the ’80s, and more recently a small, commercial flatbed truck called the Porter. From what we’ve gathered previously, the Santa Cruz will be a unibody pickup, as is the Honda Ridgeline, but with styling more akin to that of the Subaru Brat and Baja.
Hyundai’s preferred moniker for the Santa Cruz is a sport-adventure vehicle, but in Korean, ‘seupocheu moheom chalyang’ is a real mouthful. It also is oh-so-close to BMW’s trademarked sport-activity vehicle designator that it’s easy to confuse one SAV with the other, at least by label.
Touting the Santa Cruz’s unique style, a mashup of SUV, truck, and crossover elements, Hyundai promises powerful powertrain options, a must for anything even remotely resembling a truck. A rousing debate on Facebook as to what constitutes an underpowered vehicle hopefully won’t have another model to target, if Hyundai has done its homework.
In mentioning all-wheel drive, the Santa Cruz is said to be at home in more adventurous environs than the suburbs, and no doubt given the opportunity to put that to the test, we will.
How flexible can the Santa Cruz’s open bed possibly be if it’s not able to accommodate the prerequisite plywood sheet by which all pickups are judged? While there are other trucks that aren’t able to lay plywood sheets flat to the pickup bed either, there’s no way to angle it to fit from what we’ve seen thus far. Reportedly, Hobbs Truck and Jeep Accessories in Las Vegas, Nevada, has a bed rack in development for the Santa Cruz, based on intelligence they’ve gathered overseas.
“Santa Cruz, with its bold styling, breaks open all-new segment territory, both for Hyundai and the industry as a whole. Our customers will wonder just how they managed before owning one,” said Jose Munoz, president and CEO, Hyundai Motor North America. How bold? Will the Santa Cruz create a segment within the segment?
[Images: Hyundai]
Just waiting for the Maverick v Santa Cruz throw down.
It appears the Ford will be first to market despite Hyundia teasing us before with this concept.
If someone wants to gin up some outrage on Twitter (and somebody always does), they could point out that this truck is named the Holy Cross, which is sure to offend somebody.
So what do you think, will they have a big official reveal this Friday in Jerusalem? Next to the money-changing district?
It would make for a memorable payload demonstration. Hyundai could load it full of wooden beams and drive it along the Via Dolorosa. “Jesus wouldn’t have stumbled if only he drove one of these…”
They already had Santa Fe, which means Holy Faith.
They could have named this one the Santa Mierda…
How about Santa Fe? It is more generic way to insult more people.
It is also sounds like “Senator Cruz” in Brooklyn accent
So can I get my Santa Cruz with a BMI of under 40? This is what Jabba the Hut would look like as a Transformer.
Soon you will come to appreciate me.
*shrill cackle from Salacious Crumb*
I do wish this and the Maverick offered a clamshell-door cab instead of only the full crew cab.
tinyurl.com/um2982na
Other than looking better it probably would have allowed the bed to be some inches longer.
2nd that. Extended cab, more for storage than anything else, same wheelbase – more bed.
This is more of a CUV with the rear third of the roof missing than a pickup truck. Heck, the Subaru Brat was more utilitarian than this thing is.
The Santa Cruz looks nice and I’m sure it’ll more than hold its own against the Maverick. AWD/4WD helps. But a four-door pick-up with a short bed is not what I’m after. Why in the hell couldn’t Mahindra ever get its compact, two-door pick-up into this market? I suspect it would have jolted the domestic brands quite a bit. Maybe GM will come through with its latest global compact pick-up that’s under development. Or maybe the Chinese will surprise us. But I’m not holding my breath.
It’s called Lemon Laws. The trucks would eat themselves in a short amount of time.
I don’t know. Are we sure about that? I’m not disagreeing but Mahinda’s construction equipment seems to do fairly well. And don’t they have a plant in Michigan? I think the last plan to bring the pickups here involved assembly in Mexico to take advantage of North American trade laws. Either way, we’re not getting them.
There’s exponentially less things to break or not work as designed on construction equipment. Consumer protection acts don’t do much for them AFAIK. If I remember right, there was no Mexico connection, but they were to be sent from India separately from their drivetrains and installed at that plant.
There’s also those pesky US emissions (don’t bother sending diesels) and safety regs to deal with.
Why couldnt they have just made it Ridgeline sized..
I don’t think, this will fly very well in America. 1. Hyundai truck? 2. Too small of a truck
Your coming at this wrong. Instead think CUV with bed, then this makes perfect sense.
Why do people buy CUVs? They love the step in height, perceived all terrain capability, along with the active lifestyle tie ins. This type of vehicle is that with a bonus of being more truck like. In theory its a win-win. You get that cool truck look but easy to park and decent fuel economy. Nobody hauls stuff in most pickup trucks anyway these days. And those that do would never consider a unibody truck-let anyway (see Ridgeline) so that is not the market. This is for someone who thinks a CUV like the RAV4 or CRV is weak sauce because those are cute hatchbacks but this is a TRUCK (sort of).
As some who owned an SUV (Rodeo) and two smaller pickups (Ranger and Dakota) I can tell you a bed, even a short one is way more usable. Tall or messy objects can be easily hauled. So whether its mountain bikes or mulch a little truck-let is perfect.
“This is for someone who thinks a CUV like the RAV4 or CRV is weak sauce because those are cute hatchbacks but this is a TRUCK (sort of).”
Fifty shades of lame.
“a little truck-let is perfect.”
We should have specified tiny, “little” seems to mean “huge” to these designers.
Is the tiny, high-sided bed going to be well-suited to carrying mulch and mountain bikes?
This is the old Baja carrying a bike and it looks like a PITA compared to just laying it in CUV’s cargo area. And, the Subaru seemed to have lower bed sides.
https://tinyurl.com/4w4xt7tb
If the Baja has existed in 2018 there is a strong possibility I would have bought it despite the drawbacks of a Subaru. The Baja is longer than my Corolla IM but the footprint isn’t so much larger that it would have created space issues. This Santa Cruz looks to be much larger.
I am thinking of Subaru Baja. What happened? That was exactly compatible to this. Who is the buyer? If any excitement exists right now, I believe this is premature. And I have a good record of predictions. My last prediction was that newest version of Mazda3 will sink miserably. It is somewhere in comments on these pages. Looks at the data!
I understand your feelings for the small truck. But I still don’t understand who will buy this. Young people? In the city those drive small cars. They need to street-park. Contractors? – no. Suburbans – yes. Some. But I see a lot of suburban youth driving Wranglers and GTIs. We’ll see
Record-setting levels of ugly here…which gives me an inspiration for GM. Since the General is all about resurrecting dead model names (like Hummer), I think it’s time for Aztek II. It’d probably sell today.
I actually like it in these press shots or renderings. Of course, half of it is in the shadows. I don’t know how I will feel about it when I get to see the other half.
I saw an Aztec in a line of CUVs the other day and it looked totally like all the other rigs. Only reason I noticed it was the taxicab yellow paint.
I though this thing was DOA a long time ago, because they made a big deal about unveiling it in 201..5? And then never did anything with it.
Takes years to go from concept to assembly line.
This tease ain’t nothing like when GM resurrected the Camaro. They teased for so long it felt like it had been on sale for 3 years by the time it showed up on a dealer’s lot.
I think NSX 2.0 is the all time worst example of this, with the Bronco and Camaro vying for second.
Corey… apparently Hyundai was having trouble with a drawer-like bed extension that was a part of the original concept. I wonder if the feature made it to production. If it did, it might go a long way toward quieting complaints.
I am sitting here in a position to be a buyer of the concept Santa Cruz. But it has grown and added 2 full doors and strayed from what made me like the concept and I think I’m out.
As I’ve said previously, I want a 2021 version of the Subaru BRAT.
Times have changed too much. Plus compact 2-seater trucks were perfectly acceptable since it was legal for bed passengers.
You may still find some SSR out there
They embossed the name into the tailgate skin just like Chevy, Ford, Toyota and Nissan (I think). Therefore, it MUST be a truck! And you all doubted it’s credentials. ;-)
They embossed the name into the tailgate skin just like Chevy, Ford, Toyota and Nissan. Therefore, it MUST be a truck! And you all doubted it’s credentials. ;-)
I can’t quite read it, maybe they could make it bigger? /s
I would not be likely to buy a pickup, however, I would very likely consider this when my lease is up. All wheel drive, room for five and a bed. Hyundai’s warranty is 60K and they tend to have fun colors. I love my CX-30, don’t get me wrong, but I’ve had a couple of S-10s and miss that functionality the 10 times a year I need it.
I am glad to see Ford and Hyundai getting into compact trucks if they do well then maybe others will follow. I might be more interested in the Maverick since it has a slightly bigger bed.
I can see the advertising tagline:
Honey I shrunk the Avalanche!
I actually like the thing. I could see me driving this.
It’s truly amazing that any reputable automotive site posted “Voltswagen” as a serious story. I myself can be fairly naive at times, but even I instantly recognized it as an April fools prank. There’s just no way a sensible person could see such a name change actually happening. I guess the need for clicks overrode any journalistic integrity.
I wonder how many of those “trucks are too big” types will actually purchase this?
I can hear the excuses now…it’s too expensive and it isn’t brown and doesn’t have a manual transmission.
Yep. Along with the “this thing isn’t worth a penny more than 12 grand because that’s what I paid for my S-10 in 1987” or “I wanted it, but the radio only stored 5 presets and I have to have 6”. There is always some silly dealbreaker on these. The build it, the skinflints that said they’d buy it don’t, they cancel it, and then the skinflints complain that they only build big trucks.
They’ll sell a million of these things to the telephone booth relocation industry.
For everyone else the devil will be in the details, ie: cab opening up to the box, in-floor storage, etc.
So Dr. Who along with Bill and Ted will grab one in case they need to haul their time machines to the shop.
So if you put a bed cover on one of these you’d actually have a useful sedan with a real trunk opening. Outside of that, I don’t see much use.