It’s easy to write off the 2025 Hyundai Santa Cruz. It’s the company’s first-ever pickup for North America, but it’s not the kind of truck most Americans picture. It’s based on the Tucson, meaning it’s unibody, “small” by U.S. standards, and comes with front-wheel drive as standard. It’s a crossover with a truck bed, and that’s not everyone’s style.
But these days, maybe it should be.
[Ed note: As one of the site’s fellow Texans, I think it’s amusing that we’re both big fans of small trucks. I haven’t driven the refreshed Santa Cruz, but I drove one a couple of years ago and thought it was quite good for what it is. Let’s see what Alanis thinks… MH]
Why This Car Exists
The Hyundai Santa Cruz originally appeared as a concept in 2015, and Hyundai called it a “crossover-truck” for “urban adventurer millennial lifestyles.” The production Santa Cruz debuted in 2021 for the 2022 model year, and while it had a similar shape to the concept, it had a new design language that left behind one of my favorite features of the concept: coach doors! Those would have rocked.
The Santa Cruz is a reflection of the modern U.S. car market. It’s an affordable, outdoorsy compact vehicle that’s all about adventure aesthetics, from its plastic cladding to its bright-red exposed recovery hooks. It offers people a truck bed carved out of something other than a $100,000 luxury pickup, and as American trucks continue to get bigger, that’s an important gap to fill.
In Texas, where I live, people buying 1,700-square-foot new homes usually get a two-car garage, but big modern trucks often don’t fit. Instead, I see those trucks in driveways and on the street, suffering hailstorms and UV rays regularly. As full-size trucks grow and homes fail to fit them, I get why people would go for something small like the Santa Cruz.
Practical adventure vehicles are also a big trend in 2020s America, ever since people started buying cars to get out of their homes and cities into nature during the pandemic. The Santa Cruz is on the market alongside other unibody adventure vehicles like the Ford Bronco Sport and Honda Passport Trailsport, both of which I’ve taken off-road and loved.
I’ve anecdotally noticed more outdoor-oriented “normal” cars and buyers this decade, even if those cars never leave the pavement. I’ve asked a few automotive product planners if the pandemic-induced adventure cravings influenced the decision to make them, and they’ve said yes. The Santa Cruz feels similar.
2025 Hyundai Santa Cruz XRT: The Basics
In America in 2025, you can spec the Santa Cruz in five trims: the SE, SEL, SEL Activity, XRT, and Limited. The base SE trim starts at $28,750, and it comes with a 191-horsepower, four-cylinder engine, an 8-speed automatic transmission, and a towing capacity of up to 3,500 pounds. Front-wheel-drive is standard, and all-wheel drive is a $1,500 option.
The SE, SEL, and SEL Activity all have that 191-horsepower engine. The top two trims, the XRT and Limited, get 281 horsepower and all-wheel drive as standard.
- Price: $28,750 base ($41,810 as tested)
- Engine: 2.5-liter, 4-cylinder turbo
- Transmission: 8-speed dual-clutch automatic
- Drivetrain: All-wheel drive (AWD)
- Power: 281 horsepower and 311 pound-feet of torque
- Fuel Economy: 18 mpg city, 26 highway, and 21 combined
- Body Style: 5-seat unibody pickup
What It Looks Like
The Hyundai Santa Cruz is cute. That may not be what truck buyers want to hear, but it’s true: It’s a crossover with a bed cut out of the back, and that makes its shape rounded and adorable.
I don’t like most black exterior cladding on cars, and the Santa Cruz has a ton of it. It’s meant to feel sporty and adventurous, but I often think it looks cheap. But on a tiny truck like the Santa Cruz, it’s … cute. I’m saying “cute” a lot, but that’s how I feel when I look at the car.
The red front recovery hooks also add to the adventurous aesthetic. And even if you never use them to recover the Santa Cruz while off-roading, you can kick them and show people how sturdy they are.
What About The Inside?
The first thing I noticed inside the Santa Cruz was the logo on the steering wheel, which is a silver bar with four dots. It’s an “H” in Morse code, and Hyundai’s using the logo more and more. People love taking photos of their steering wheels, and a logo like that is a conversation starter.
The logo mirrors the minimalist approach to the interior. My loaner Santa Cruz XRT had an all-black interior, and the minimalist styling didn’t work as well because of that; there wasn’t a lot of variation to carry my eye throughout the cabin, and too much of the surface area was piano black, which gets dusty, greasy, and scratched almost immediately.
But there are tons of things to like about the inside of the Santa Cruz. It has a storage shelf built into the dashboard, which is a modern trend that makes use of an otherwise useless space. It also has a long screen setup for the driver instrument cluster and infotainment system, which looks clean and is easy to use. I also had probably six inches of legroom in the rear seats with the front seats all the way back.
The truck bed on the Santa Cruz is small — 4 feet — and I’m sure the rear legroom is one of the reasons. But I assume people buying the Santa Cruz will have rear passengers more often than they have massive cargo in the bed (otherwise, they’d get a bigger truck), so it feels like the best of both worlds.
How It Drives
The Santa Cruz XRT has almost 300 horsepower, and because it’s a crossover-truck, it’s moderately quick. Crossovers feel more agile than big, body-on-frame trucks, and the Santa Cruz is similar. It’s a manageable size with the practicality of a truck bed, and it’s fun.
There’s a moderate amount of road and wind noise, especially on the highway. Even at neighborhood speeds, I could hear the road underneath me, but not loudly. The smooth suspension helps counteract the noise; bumps and dips aren’t rough, and that allowed me to better ignore the sounds seeping into the cabin.
While I had the Santa Cruz, I picked up a bookshelf and large mirror that wouldn’t have fit in a lot of SUVs. Together, they didn’t lay flat in the bed because it was too small. But I had unlimited vertical storage to work with (like I do in my Mazdaspeed Miatas), proving the Santa Cruz’s real-world, practical use.
The Santa Cruz is a logical vehicle, in both its use case and its driving experience. I grew up in Texas, where tons of people have huge trucks. Even in high school, the kids around me drove trucks they never truly used. Every day, the beds were empty as they traversed city streets instead of off-road terrain.
They didn’t need those trucks; they just wanted them for show. It was a waste, but the Santa Cruz isn’t.
Does the 2025 Hyundai Santa Cruz Fulfill Its Purpose?
Crossover-trucks like the Hyundai Santa Cruz have a place on the market, because they’re usable without being obstructive. They’re comfortable, compact, and enjoyable to drive, and they’re more efficient than the full-size, body-on-frame trucks most people never fully use.
The Santa Cruz is a truck for people who don’t need a truck every day of their lives, but like the convenience of one a few times a year. The rest of the time, it’s a crossover-like vehicle with a comfortable ride and room for rear passengers.
In America, that’s a great gap to fill.
Holy horrendously hideous front end there Hyundai.
Imagine if Toyota built a small truck this size with the hybrid RAV4 powertrain? How is something like this or the maverick on its second generation and Toyota hasn’t even bothered to compete.
They’re probably afraid it would eat into Taco sales in the US.
They should be afraid of their own decisions lately jeopardizing sales. From weak front diffs, those hilarious ‘folding’ rear seats in the LC/4R, the prices, the engine choices, add into that the lack of a competitive product across each segment and Toyota doesn’t seem like the obvious choice anymore for the people (like me) who bought them and kept them their whole life.
Just did a quick cross-shop against a base model Rideline which has a 280 hp V6 and AWD, and it’s the same price as this, and you’ll get a very nicely equipped Maverick at that price. So I guess it’s competitive, but I’d probably go Honda for long term reliability,