The Hyundai Santa Cruz will be the automaker's first pickup and will share components with the Santa Fe crossover.

Built with a unibody design, the Santa Cruz will be a pickup intended for those who haul bulky, but not heavy, objects.

It should reach dealers in 2021 with a starting price of around $25,000.

This story originally appeared in the May 2020 issue of Car and Driver as part of our 25 Cars Worth Waiting For package. Our sneak preview of the most exciting cars coming in the next few years draws on knowledge from leaked product-development plans, spy photos, and loose-lipped insiders mixed in with information that has already been officially released. The reporting for this story was completed in February and early March, before the auto industry began feeling major effects of the coronavirus pandemic. As many automakers are now delaying or pausing development programs, the debut and on-sale dates reported here may change.

The Hyundai Santa Cruz is the automaker's foray into the pickup market. It follows Honda's approach rather than the formula that American manufacturers perfected. The unibody truck will be offered with a single bed length, a four-door crew cab, and a choice of four-cylinder engines. We expect to see the Santa Fe's 2.4-liter and turbocharged 2.0-liter inline-fours paired with an eight-speed automatic and all-wheel drive.

The Santa Cruz will ride on the same basic bones and be built in the same Montgomery, Alabama, plant as the Santa Fe mid-size crossover. Hyundai's plan for the Santa Cruz is as an affordable and efficient choice for drivers who haul bulky but not necessarily heavy items—think mountain bikes, kayaks, and camping gear rather than gravel, boats, and cinder blocks.

It'll compete mostly with the Honda Ridgeline, the only other unibody pickup in the U.S. market, but also the Chevrolet Colorado, Ford Ranger, GMC Canyon, Nissan Frontier, Toyota Tacoma, and to a lesser extent, the Jeep Gladiator. Hyundai has confirmed production for the Santa Cruz, but with towing and payload capabilities expected to be below those of its competitors, there's no guarantee that sales will materialize. It should reach dealers in 2021 with a starting price around $25,000.

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