Let’s face it, not every driver needs a hulking 6,000-pound pickup truck with a gas-guzzling 500 horsepower engine just to take the family on a camping trip or make a run to the local home improvement store for building supplies. Enter the compact pickup. Hyundai’s Santa Cruz finds itself in a unique position as the only competitor to Ford’s popular Maverick, and what a worthy competitor the Santa Cruz is.
Key Takeaways
- The Hyundai Santa Cruz is the most car-like choice among smaller pickup trucks, with high-quality cabin materials and a comfortable ride.
- Though the cargo bed is compact, it has lots of usefulness via an in-floor storage box and a lockable tonneau cover.
- The optional 2.5-liter turbocharged has been praised for its crisp, sporty acceleration and torque.
- Maximum towing capacity of 5,000 pounds is comparable to other unibody trucks and more than sufficient for hauling modest size campers, boats, and other adventure equipment.
The Santa Cruz is still in its first generation
In its inaugural model year of 2022, the Santa Cruz was offered in four different trim levels with varying levels of luxury and technology, along with two different powertrain options. Standard was a 2.5-liter four-cylinder making 191 horsepower and 181 pound-feet of torque. If your budget permits, we’d recommend seeking out a pre-owned Santa Cruz with the available 2.5-liter turbocharged engine with 281 horses and 311 pound-feet of torque, which is more suited to this tidy little pickup. Regardless of engine selection, every Santa Cruz gets an eight-speed automatic transmission.
Front-wheel drive is standard but all varieties of the Santa Cruz are qualified for the optional all-wheel drive system, which is handy in snow or for light-duty off-road adventures. If you’re considering grabbing a used Santa Cruz for towing, the maximum capacity is roughly comparable to its mid-size competitors at 5,000 pounds with the turbocharged engine. The less powerful naturally aspirated engine enables towing 3,500 pounds.
At the time of writing, even the oldest Santa Cruz trucks have only been on the road a few years, so changes among model years have been minimal. Buyers will find mostly minor cosmetic tweaks and shuffling of equipment between trim levels.
Model year 2023 also brought a sinister looking blacked-out “Night” trim level, while 2024 unveiled a new XRT trim level which blends luxury with a healthy dose of rugged truck stuff like fender flares and running boards. The finer points of the minor trim level changes from year-to-year are probably beyond the scope of this particular overview, but we encourage you to reach out to our knowledgeable sales staff to learn the particulars and availability of your desired equipment.
High praise from the media.
Car and Driver once said of the Santa Cruz, “You can forget it's a truck until you need it to be one." Indeed, the U.S.-built Santa Cruz’s combination of comfort, usefulness, and drivability in smaller urban environments culminated in a 2024 Editor’s Choice award from that publication. That’s on top of similar accolades from NewsWeek, MotorTrend, and others.
Your used Santa Cruz could still be under warranty.
New Hyundai vehicles come with one of the best warranties in the business: a 5-year or 60,000 miles (whichever comes first) bumper-to-bumper comprehensive warranty and a 10-year or 100,000 mile warranty on major powertrain components like the engine and transmission.
However, once the vehicle is no longer in possession of the first owner, the powertrain warranty shortens to 5 years or 60,000 miles to match the duration of the bumper-to-bumper warranty. Still, if Santa Cruz buyers can find an example to purchase with less than 60,000 miles on the odometer, know that it’ll still be covered by the factory warranty for a period of time. That’s a huge benefit when buying a used car and should catapult the Santa Cruz to the top of your list among small to midsize pickup trucks.