This past week, Hyundai invited some members of the press to drive the 2022 Hyundai Santa Cruz for the first time. I was one of the folks invited on that trip, and I’m ready to answer your questions in an upcoming review. What do you want to know?
I can’t share driving impressions of the vehicle yet due to embargoes, so I won’t be able to answer any questions in the comments of this post. But before I write up my review, I thought I would consult the fine people of Jalopnik about what they’d like to read. What questions have you been wondering that I can help you answer?
As a reminder, this vehicle is a little something strange, like a crossover and a pickup truck had a baby. People have compared it to the El Camino and the Subaru Baja, both of which were beloved by a niche contingent of folks but not enough to actually keep these cars in production. The car-with-a-truck-bed just hasn’t really hit it off, but Hyundai is confident that things will be different this time around. I’ll definitely chat more about that in my review; the brand has some really interesting ideas about how it wants to position the Santa Cruz in the larger car market.
I can give you some of the main details of my drive. We navigated around a variety of Northern California roads, everything from twisty mountain paths to stretching coastal roads. Journalists were handed the top-of-the-line trim, which clocks in at around $40,000, though the base model is a pretty affordable $24,000. Hyundai didn’t have any of the other trims available for review, but I did get to take a cruise in the Hyundai Kona N — a review for a later time.
I will say one thing, though: I had more people stop to ask me about the Santa Cruz than I’ve ever had in any other press car. Part of that is its novelty; it’s not a common thing to see a vehicle that looks like a crossover from the front and a pickup from the back. One of those people, an older gentleman changing a dirty tire that he had to place in his carpeted SUV trunk, even said he’d consider this instead of the Subaru Crosstrek that he had previously been eyeing.
Let me know. I am here to be your servant of the people.
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