2022 Hyundai Santa Cruz: A Truck by Any Other Name

Compact pickups are here – again. This time, an insatiable pickup market might be more receptive to the compromises, real or imagined.

Rather than buyers of conventional pickup trucks, the 2022 Hyundai Santa Cruz targets crossover buyers who prefer the advantages of an open cargo bed. (Hyundai)

The Venn diagram of why pickup trucks – particularly fullsizers – succeed in the American consumer psyche surely is a complex and bizarre hodgepodge of reality and perception. But there’s no doubt pickups are here to stay and now automakers have set to work filling every size segment with this currently beloved body style.

Crisp and creased sheetmetal will distance the 2022 Santa Cruz apart from traditional pickups. (Hyundai)

For decades, the notion of compact pickups has been ignored, largely because most companies’ manufacturing capacity has been directed to fullsize body-on-frame behemoths their correspondingly outsized profits. When the market got too overheated for only fullsizers to handle, midsize models a few years ago got renewed attention. But even today’s midsize pickups are large-ish and expensive-ish, leading product-development to the inevitable: compact pickups – or, considering the dimensional bloat of all segments over the past two decades, “smaller-than-midsize” might be a more appropriate description.

And even though it took Hyundai an almost inexplicable (well, there is an explanation) six years to get from Santa Cruz concept vehicle to 2022 Santa Cruz production vehicle, the new Santa Cruz is satisfyingly faithful to the concept’s sharky sheetmetal – which is to say, it looks quite contemporary and not pickup-blocky, underscoring Hyundai product planner Melvyn Bautista’s assertion the Santa Cruz is “not intended for traditional pickup owners.” Instead, he said at a media drive near Detroit, Hyundai’s new hybrid body style – the company’s first North America-specific model, by the way – is targeted at crossover-vehicle intenders who would prefer an open bed and don’t have many of the duty-cycle expectations of pickup owners or intenders.

Then again, even though it’s based on the unibody architecture of the all-new 2022 Tucson SUV, the Santa Cruz has been engineered to tow as much as 5000 lb (2268 kg), albeit with trailer brakes and a complicated rigging purportedly will allow the stumpy cargo bed to haul standard plywood sheets. There’s that pesky Venn diagram at work.

The bed’s the thing

The Santa Cruz’s upgrade engine is a turbocharged 2.5L that generates a midsize-truckish 281 hp. (Hyundai)
Hyundai notes one reason crossover buyers may prefer an open cargo area is for hauling grubby gear. (Hyundai)
With a truncated bed length come limitations. (Hyundai)

It’s too bad Hyundai couldn’t (or wouldn’t) design the Santa Cruz to incorporate the novel extendable bed of the 2015 Santa Cruz concept that slid outward like a filing-cabinet drawer. Because let’s face it, the singular metric of a cargo bed’s usefulness is its length, and the Santa Cruz’s 52.1-in. (1323-mm) bed is minimalist by that standard. Ford’s Maverick, slated to launch later this year as the first direct competitor to the Santa Cruz, sports a marginally longer bed at 54.4 in. (1382 mm). And at 195.7 in. (4971 mm) in overall length, the Santa Cruz is 4 in. (102 mm) shorter than the Maverick. Hyundai showed almost comical images of bicycles in the bed with their front wheels draped over the tailgate, seemingly highlighting the bed’s limitations.

Lowering the tailgate comes with a satisfying damping motion, however, and the gate can be dropped with a press on the key fob. The bed is deep, at least (19.2 in./488 mm), and the lift-in height is a humane 31.6 in. (803 mm) – tried pitching a sack of ready-mix concrete into the neck-high bed of a conventional midsize pickup? And if the Santa Cruz’s bed is fitted with the bed-extender accessory, bikes and some types of longer objects might be more readily accommodated.

The bed also features a secure storage box under the cargo floor, but it seems too shallow to be of much use. There are myriad tie-downs and cargo-box features to facilitate multiple configurations and the clever rollaway hard tonneau cover imparts the potential to make the entire bed a lockable storage area, although we suspect that tonneau’s housing came at the expense of a few inches of potential bed length.

Power enough, price is right?

The 2022 Santa Cruz powertrain lineup consists of a normally-aspirated 2.5L 4-cyl. that develops 191 hp and 181 lb-ft (245 Nm) for the SE and SEL trims. An 8-speed automatic transmission is standard and this engine can be mated to Hyundai’s HTRAC all-wheel-drive (AWD) as an upgrade over the base front-wheel-drive layout.

The upgrade for SEL Premium and Limited trims is a turbocharged variant of the 2.5L that generates a grunty 281 hp and 311 lb-ft (422 Nm), channeling exclusively through an 8-speed dual-clutch automated manual transmission and AWD. This was the only powertrain we were able to try and it’s certainly enough to shove the unladen Santa Cruz with aplomb and this configuration brings midsize-pickup power to towing, which Bautista said Hyundai’s research showed is a “nice-to-have” feature for about 25-30% of potential buyers. He also said there will be a FWD/turbo-engine layout available in later production from Hyundai’s assembly plant in Montgomery, AL.

A standout dynamic feature is the brilliantly tuned damping for the Santa Cruz’s independent front and rear (self-leveling) suspension. We pounded the Santa Cruz over every rough-pavement surface available and hit some washboarded dirt roads for added measure and the truck glided over it all with firm and supple absorbency, precisely how most would like an unladen pickup to ride. The Santa Fe’s only chassis bugaboo seems to be the brakes, 12.8-in (3250mm) front rotors borrowed straight off the Tucson apart from a slight upgrade for the rear discs from 12-in (305-mm) diameter to the same 12.8 in. as the front. As with another unibody pickup with which we’re familiar, the Santa Cruz seems evidence that Hyundai also doesn’t believe brakes should be significantly upgraded for a vehicle billed as a pickup.

The Santa Cruz’s cabin has a wide and roomy feel (at least up front) and comes fitted with a solid dose of comfort and convenience, including plenty of standard and available electronic active-safety features still unavailable in pickups a segment above the new Hyundai. The rear seat feels slightly closed-in, perhaps partly because of the upright and non-adjustable seatback.

Viewed through the prism of realistic buyer expectations, the Santa Cruz seems to hit all the buttons, but pricing might get in the way. Although a FWD model with the base engine starts at a reasonable-enough $25,175 (including $1,185 destination!) and the first step into AWD comes for $26,675, plumping for turbocharged power brings a whopping jump to $36,685 and our top-trim Limited test vehicle rung in at a stinging $41,500. It’s already known that Ford’s Maverick will cost thousands less and also offers a hybrid variant (which Bautista confirmed Hyundai is studying for Santa Cruz). Although new-vehicle pricing has hit record highs, $35,000-plus stickers could inject complications for what some buyers may perceive as an “entry-level” segment.