Hyundai Santa Cruz Truck Concept: The Long-Awaited Pickup Finally Arrives - Car and Driver (blog)

Rumors that Hyundai would introduce a pickup truck to the U. S. market have swirled for years, but they always seemed to fall just short of reality. The rumblings typically centered around a full-size model, a bold and ballsy shot across the bow of the Detroit Three, yet at the 2015 Detroit auto show , Hyundai surprised everyone with a unique and very much not full-size truck. Neither a Proper Truck Nor a Honda Ridgeline Redux Hyundai says that it came up with the Santa Cruz’s basic format after “intently listening to customers” and recognizing their needs, and apparently enough of those folks wanted a CUV-type vehicle... But that group has to be a tiny bunch, right, especially in the bigger’s-always-better U. S. A. Indeed—but Hyundai’s research shows that full-size pickup purchases are decreasing both among women and the under-30 crowd and that those groups could... At first blush, it’d be easy to write off Hyundai’s first U. S. pickup as a sort of Honda Ridgeline copy. Sure, it’s car-based—we’re told the concept is based on a current Hyundai crossover, likely the one with “Santa” in its name —and it features unibody construction, but unlike the Ridgeline, the Santa Cruz is compact. It also isn’t a proper four-door crew cab like the Honda, making do instead with a proportion-friendly extended-cab configuration with rear-hinged suicide doors. Source: www.caranddriver.com