Hyundai is introducing a whole new take on the small pickup. They’re poised to shake things up and change the way we look at trucks.
Right now, the pickup truck market in the US has full-size trucks which include trucks such as the Ford F-150, Chevrolet Silverado, Ram 1500, Toyota Tundra, and Nissan Titan, and the midsize truck market where you’ll find the new Ford Ranger, Chevrolet Colorado, Toyota Tacoma, Nissan Frontier, and Honda Ridgeline. There isn’t a compact truck market any longer as the midsize trucks have grown and are now more purpose-built, but it appears the new Hyundai Santa Cruz could change that and give us a new compact truck to choose.
The Hyundai Santa Cruz is Coming
We’ve seen the concept version of this new pickup truck at shows and it has been given the green light to be put to production and offered in North America by 2020 or 2021. This new truck is expected to be marketed toward urban drivers that might purchase a crossover SUV, like the Santa Fe, most of the time but instead would like to have an open bed pickup truck instead. This new truck will be smaller than most of the midsize models that we see on the market right now to give us a new class of pickup trucks in the North American market.
What is the Santa Cruz?
What we’ve seen for the new Santa Cruz is a concept model that showed up as a small vehicle that is a two-door pickup that has a unique bed. It could become a four-door model as well to give you more room for more passengers when you need it. The bed of the concept model featured a unique bed with extending bedsides to allow the truck to carry cargo that’s longer with the tailgate down. We’re not sure if this new tailgate will be offered on the production model, but it would make for an interesting truck to drive.
What Power will be Offered?
There’s an excellent chance the new Santa Cruz will be powered only by a four-cylinder engine when it arrives. This engine could be used with AWD to give you more of the control you want when it’s time for the drive. Because of this small and active powertrain, the feeling is the truck will be small and it will not be as capable as the trucks in the rest of the market, but it will be one that can appeal to those who don’t need to do a lot of truck stuff.
Expected Pricing for the Santa Cruz
For those who need a small truck on a tight budget, the Hyundai team is hoping the Santa Cruz I the truck they choose. While this won’t be the work truck that you take to the job to pull the trailer or carry a massive and heavy load, it is a truck that could give you the ride you need every day and the capability you’ll want to make use of whenever you can. It will arrive in a couple of years and then we’re going to have a brand new truck class to deal with as the Santa Cruz recreates the compact truck segment.
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