The Hyundai Santa Cruz has been spied by our photographers testing in the extreme cold. The Santa Cruz is a light pick-up truck that’s being introduced to target a millennial buyer, as stated by the Korean automaker, back in 2019. Hyundai also confirmed that production of the compact-pickup-up would be manufactured at Hyundai’s Alabama plant. It will be built alongside the Santa Fe, and is believed to share the same platform as the popular SUV.
The platform sharing means that buyers
shouldn’t expect the Santa Cruz to offer up any serious load-carrying capacity
as it will have a unibody construction. Instead, expect the Santa Cruz to aim
at pinching sales away from Honda’s Ridgeline light pick-up. In these spy
images, we can see a grille design behind the camouflaging, which appears to
share similarities with Hyundai’s upcoming Elantra. The positioning of the
grill in relation to the lights takes after the Palisade rather than the Santa
Fe — it features large bumper-integrated headlights flanking each side of the
grille and a slimmer DRL/turn Signal arrangement up top.
All four doors feature conventional
handles, with an upswept waistline revealing a missing trim piece where the
rear door window meets the body. Also visible is heavy lower-body cladding in
plastic, and a sharkfin antenna. It’s evident from these spy images that the
Santa Cruz isn’t intended to be a large workhorse, with a short load tray and a
stylized, almost flying-buttress-style section at the rear of the bed, likely
helping aerodynamics.
The Santa Cruz has been in the works for
some time, with a late 2021 or early 2022 reveal anticipated. It’s expected
that prices will start below US$ 30,000, undercutting the Honda Ridgeline’s US$ 37,600 starting. While an all-wheel-drive variant is almost a foregone
conclusion, no info has been revealed about whether a front-wheel powered
version is on the cards.
Expect the Santa Cruz to feature the same
engine and transmission options as the Santa Fe, which are 2.5-liter 4-cylinder
lumps, with and without the assistance of a turbo, coupled to an eight-speed
transmission.