Automotive Engineering - October 2021 - 14

ROAD READY
2022 Hyundai Santa Cruz: A truck by any other name
Rather than target buyers of conventional pickup trucks, the 2022 Hyundai Santa Cruz aims for
crossover buyers who prefer the advantages of an open cargo bed.
The Venn diagram of why pickup trucks
- particularly fullsizers - succeed in
the American consumer psyche surely is
complex and bizarre. But pickups are
here to stay and now automakers have
set to work filling every size segment
with this beloved body style.
For decades, the notion of compact
pickups has been ignored, largely because
most companies' manufacturing
capacity has been directed to full-size
body-on-frame behemoths and their
correspondingly outsized profits. When
the market got too overheated for only
full-sizers to handle, midsize models a
few years ago got renewed attention.
But even today's midsize pickups are
large-ish and not inexpensive, leading
product-development to the inevitable:
compact pickups. Considering the dimensional
bloat of all segments over
the past two decades, " smaller-thanmidsize "
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. It underscories
Hyundai product planner Melvyn
Bautista's assertion the Santa Cruz is
" not intended for traditional pickup
14 October 2021
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 allnew
2022 Tucson SUV, the Santa Cruz
has been engineered to tow as much as
5000 lb (2268 kg), albeit with trailer
brakes. A complicated rigging purportedly
will allow the stumpy cargo bed to
haul standard plywood sheets - that
pesky Venn diagram at work again.
The bed's the thing
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 two key metrics
of a cargo bed's usefulness are its
length and ground-to-bed height. The
Santa Cruz's 52.1-in. (1323-mm) bed is
minimalist by the first 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.
Lowering the tailgate comes with a
satisfying damping motion, however,
and the gate can be dropped with a
press of the key fob. The bed is deep, at
least (19.2 in./488 mm), and the lift-in
(ground-to-bed) height is a humane
31.6 in. (803 mm). This will be a welcome
relief to anyone who has 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.
Crisp and creased sheetmetal will distance the 2022 Santa Cruz from traditional pickups.
AUTOMOTIVE ENGINEERING
ALL IMAGES: HYUNDAI

Automotive Engineering - October 2021

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