2025 Hyundai Santa Cruz Ultimate
Price: $50,499 CAD
Colour: Rockwood Green
When the Hyundai Santa Cruz debuted for the 2022 model year there was much chatter about whether it was a pickup truck or not. I wrote a review at the time stating clearly it wasn’t. Hyundai themselves said the same thing preferring to qualify the Santa Cruz as an “adventure vehicle” as opposed to anything approaching a conventional pickup. Three years later and Hyundai has sold over 100,000 units so it’s time we get a refreshed Santa Cruz that doesn’t stray too far from what is already working. Updated front end and minor interior tweaks aside, this is still the same old adventure vehicle we’ve come to love.
I spend a lot of time on the road and the amount of full-sized pickups I encounter in my travels defies belief. The North American obsession with big boy pickups is something the rest of the world struggles to wrap their heads around. As a man who has spent many years driving Ram trucks and F-150’s I want to make my love for this kind of vehicle clear – I’m very much a part of the problem. I have a clear preference for massive cars and smaller cars like sports coupes, sedans and hatchbacks. This mentality firmly in place leaves me wondering if there’s a place for a vehicle that sits in the middle between these two segments? I think there is.
The Hyundai Santa Cruz harkens back to the old days of small pickups and what the Aussies would call a “ute” type of vehicle design. I remember when the El Camino was a common sight on the road and its shape always stuck in my head. It wasn’t pretty by any means, but it did propose an interesting idea – a car with pickup truck utility. We’ve seen carmakers try this before. Take for example the Subaru Baja. That was a curious exercise that crashed and burned on takeoff. The problem with that vehicle was the “pickup” part of the equation was ridiculously small. So small in fact that you got almost none of the utility we love from pickups. The Santa Cruz is different. That box is still small (and surprising shallow) but you can still get a lot of daily tasks done that need that sort of space. You can also pack all your adventure type gear and strap it down. This provides value not allowed for with a traditional SUV. The Santa Cruz also factors in a reality of the North American motorist that is as immutable as the moons travel around the Earth – we don’t like small things. If the Santa Cruz was any smaller, it would be diminutive and would have suffered the same fate as the Baja from years past.
One thing not commented on about a vehicle like the Santa Cruz is how brave it is. It’s pretty singular in the market with little to provide real competition. This is a good thing but also speaks to how the rest of the carmakers look at the “ute” segment (that’s what I’m calling it from now on). We will never likely do a ute like the Aussies but that doesn’t mean we won’t accept one built with the North American sensibility in mind. Hyundai is very good at occupying spaces others fear to tread and finding success there once they do. I hope the success of the Santa Cruz continues to spur them forward into the unknown as I think we’ll see some very unusual and (hopefully) interesting cars as a result.
