This one's personal. I grew up in Santa Cruz County. My mom still lives in the house I grew up in, 20 minutes down the road from Santa Cruz. I surfed at Manresa, mountain-biked in Nisene Marks, rock-climbed at Pacific Edge. I am the target demographic for the 2022 Hyundai Santa Cruz, but does it do justice to its namesake, my hometown?
I'll admit, there was trepidation on my part. The Santa Cruz looks great on paper, but it's based on the new Tucson SUV, which we found to be a triumph of form over function in a recent comparison test. It was slow and rode harshly, but it looked great and was bursting at the seams with style and tech. Does the Santa Cruz compact pickup truck suffer the same fate?
Good To Drive—At Least In Certain Trims.
Five minutes behind the wheel of this small truck puts that fear to rest, so long as you pop for one of the top two trims. The Santa Cruz comes as a front-wheel-drive truck with a naturally aspirated 2.5-liter four-cylinder, but you can upgrade both aspects, adding all-wheel drive and a turbocharger. Hyundai only provided a turbocharged all-wheel-drive model for this review, so we can't tell you for certain the base model doesn't suffer the Tucson's ride and power deficiencies.
We can absolutely tell you the top models don't. All tricked out, the Santa Cruz rides and drives wonderfully. Some pickup trucks struggle to ride nicely without any load in the bed, but not the Santa Cruz. On the bumpy roads of the Santa Cruz Mountains and the worn-out concrete of Bay Area freeways, the little truck rides beautifully. From behind the wheel, the Santa Cruz compact pickup drives like a better SUV than the Tucson. The only reminder you're driving a truck is the mail slot of a rear window, a common problem even among larger midsize pickups.
We can take an educated guess about the base engine's performance, though. Aside from model-specific programming, the standard powertrain is identical to the one in the Tucson we tested, only in the SUV it has to move a vehicle that's at least 200 pounds heavier when similarly equipped. That thing needed 9.3 seconds to hit 60 mph from a stop, and efficiency-minded transmission programming made it feel even slower. We can only hope the base Santa Cruz is tuned for performance, or it's going to be a real dog with any gear in the back.
Credit Source : motortrend.com
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