By Adam Ismail
There’s a lot that is suboptimal about today’s new car market. One of the few advantages, though, is that at least buyers have the luxury of being able to choose the degree of truck that they want. There is no one or two sizes made to fit all; today, you have your full- and mid-sizers, but there’s also your car-based pickups, small pickups, and soon, even electric pickups you put together yourself.
The 2025 Hyundai Santa Cruz finds itself somewhere along this spectrum. Serious truck people might knock it for having a unibody chassis and 4.3-foot bed, while others are drawn to it for its unconventional design and surprisingly competent road manners. I don’t know if it’s a great pickup for everyone, but chances are it’s the right pickup for someone, and in this saturated market, that matters too.
The Hyundai Santa Cruz is now in its fourth model year, and 2025 marks a mid-cycle refresh for the little ute. If you know where to look, you’ll spot differences in the grille design, and there’s also a more rough-and-tumble XRT trim on offer now. But the real changes have been made inside the cabin, where the new Santa Cruz looks and feels decidedly upmarket for a compact truck, even compared to the pre-facelift model.
It might seem strange to start a truck review by talking about the interior, but that really is where this new model stakes its claim and sets itself apart from anything else on the market. Imagine a generic pickup’s interior—what do you see? Big, meaty shifters and dials? Hexagonal vents? Rubberized trays, so your many loose tools don’t slide around? Trim adorned with faux hex bolts? The Santa Cruz has none of these gaudy, gruff, stereotypical hallmarks, and it’s better for it.
Here’s what I got instead in my Limited-grade loaner: High-quality plastics. A low dash and slim pillars with excellent visibility. Tasteful materials like heather canvas fabric and perforated sage leather for the seats. And a pair of screens that, like in other Hyundai Group products, stretch from the instrument cluster to the center stack without dominating your view. The one indication you’re in a pickup and not just a nice, modern car is the shelf above the glovebox, and it’s a practical touch. Overall, this cabin would be appropriate and appreciated in any vehicle that cost the $44,575 of my fully spec’d pickup, and ironically, that’s what makes the Santa Cruz special: How normal it is.
That said, it does have its share of quirks, which shouldn’t surprise given the truck’s polarizing exterior. The steering wheel, which has a more traditional three-spoke design than it used to, has a bottom that’s not quite flat nor circular; it’s kind of in between. Like in other Hyundai products, there’s a fingerprint sensor that you can link to your user profile. That doesn’t seem especially useful to me, which is why I’m a bit puzzled why Hyundai mounted it to a massive, dedicated panel to the left of the instrument cluster. And the bulk of the HVAC controls living as software buttons on their own screen is bound to frustrate you, like it did me.
I also found myself wishing Hyundai made a two-door Santa Cruz where the bed could reclaim some of the space for second-row seating, because passengers don’t even get much room back there. I assumed Tucson-like rear legroom, but it’s actually five inches tighter. The only saving grace is that you can lift the seats to reveal pretty sizable storage buckets.
As for the bed itself, it comes with a tonneau on the Limited trim, which I found pretty finicky to push open and pull close; sometimes it feels like you’ve got to use almost destructive force to work the latch. It also eats up a fair bit of room toward the far end, against the passenger compartment. On the plus side, Hyundai gives you three storage areas within the bed—a cubby for each side, with one of them containing an AC socket, as well as an underfloor compartment with drainage. Think of all the tailgating possibilities!
So, we’ve tackled the thoughtful, refreshing interior and the clever storage solutions. The other thing that makes the Santa Cruz stand out among trucks is how it drives. Before mine was delivered, I read my friend Andrew’s review from a while back to get our temperature on the thing, since I’d never driven one before. Like him, I received a model with the optional upgrade engine: a 2.5-liter turbocharged four-cylinder making 281 horsepower and 311 lb-ft of torque. In the Santa Cruz, this powertrain only comes with all-wheel drive. Just like Andrew, I was amazed at how dang fun it was. In terms of agility, this is practicality the Miata among vehicles with a bed.
This powertrain will not leave you dissatisfied; my only gripe with it was the calibration of the accelerator pedal, where the line between no movement at all and brisk acceleration seemed too fine for crawling at stop lights. But the composure of the chassis is what really sticks with you.
Sure, the Santa Cruz isn’t built on a ladder frame, but you just don’t expect a vehicle with a bed to handle this intuitively, this nimbly. It made the wayward, clumsy Yukon AT4 I tested a few months ago feel like a barge. Oh—and the Santa Cruz rode far more comfortably than that big SUV that cost more than double its price, too. I know people don’t buy trucks for spirited drives, but the way I see it, the typical Santa Cruz customer is hauling small to moderate cargo some of the time, and driving it all of the time. If you want to enjoy your truck, whether you’re using it to schlep stuff or not, buy a Santa Cruz.
Fuel economy for the turbo-equipped Santa Cruz is about mid-pack for its segment. The Limited trim, which only comes in AWD turbo guise, comes in at 19 mpg city and 27 highway, averaging 22 combined; that’s about what I observed, too. Trucks with the base, naturally aspirated powertrain fare a bit better—21 city, 29 highway—with a 1 mpg bump on top of that for the front-wheel-drive version.
Those figures are respectable, but pale compared to the Ford Maverick, which delivers 22/30 even with its most potent, 250-hp powertrain and all-wheel drive. Buyers who choose Ford and want to prioritize fuel economy can also opt for the base hybrid configuration, which promises up to 42 mpg. The Honda Ridgeline, on the other hand, comes up short against the Santa Cruz, at 18/24 with its single powertrain, a 280-hp V6.
Turning to towing capacity, the Santa Cruz is rated to pull 5,000 pounds, but only with the better engine; otherwise, you’re looking at 3,500 pounds. The Ridgeline is also limited to 5,000 pounds, while the Maverick sits at either 2,000 or 4,000 pounds, depending on whether the 4K Tow Package is equipped.
Many times in the Santa Cruz’s short life, it has been asked who this vehicle is for, and at first glance, I didn’t really have an answer to that. It isn’t exceptionally spacious for people or cargo, and if you really need a cheap workhorse around this size, the Maverick is right there for a little less on paper.
Emphasis on “a little,” though. Because the Maverick has very quickly ballooned in price, so it’s not the value it once was. The cheapest Santa Cruz is actually priced $200 lower, at $30,245, than the cheapest Mav, which is really just a work truck. If you want turbo power and all-wheel drive from Hyundai’s pickup, you’ll be spending at least $42,700, which again isn’t massively far off from the price of a similarly equipped, similarly capable small truck from Ford.
A maxed Santa Cruz, like the one I reviewed, still costs about $5,000 less than the average new car in this country. Considering the price, I found it to be a surprisingly comfortable, well-designed, and even fun-to-drive vehicle. Those perks might sound wide of the mark for a pickup, but with the quantity of people buying trucks these days, I imagine there’s someone out there looking for one that’s got a little life behind the wheel.
The Hyundai Santa Cruz is a functional, if small pickup with the soul of a sensible, stylish normal car, and that makes it unique.
Backed by a decade of covering cars and consumer tech, Adam Ismail is a Senior Editor at The Drive, focused on curating and producing the site’s slate of daily stories.
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By Adam Ismail
By Adam Ismail