Up Close: We get an in-person 'first look' at Hyundai's 2022 Santa Cruz

Can a truck actually be a truck, even though it isn’t a truck like most other trucks? Hyundai thinks so, and so it’s giving us the 2022 Santa Cruz, which it calls a “Sport Adventure Vehicle.”

We recently got an in-the-flesh look, inside Hyundai Canada’s headquarters. It goes on sale later this summer, with pricing announced closer to launch.

The bed is 4 feet long – only a foot and a half less than the shortest bed on a full-size Ford F-150 crew cab. It’s 3.5 feet across at the wheel wells, and 4.5 feet across above them (in metric, that’s 1,219 mm long; 1,092 mm wide; and 1,143 mm above the wheel wells). You can hook the tailgate cables higher up, putting the partially-opened gate in line with the tops of the wells. That lets you slide in wider items, such as a sheet of plywood.

The Santa Cruz uses a turbocharged 2.5L four-cylinder, making 281 horsepower and 311 lb-ft of torque. It’s mated to an eight-speed, dual-clutch automatic transmission, and all-wheel drive is standard equipment. The system sends most of its power to the front in normal driving, but when “sport” mode is selected, delivers more to the rear. You can also select drive modes optimized for mud, sand, or snow.

The cabin looks plain but functional, with a simple centre stack containing a full-width infotainment screen, and buttons for the climate control and other functions. I was obviously looking at a top-of-the-line model, as it included dual-zone automatic climate control, heated and ventilated seats, heated steering wheel, and navigation.

But every trim will come standard with a set of higher-tech safety assist systems, which Hyundai calls SmartSense, and which includes emergency front braking with pedestrian and cyclist detection, lane-keeping assist, blind-spot monitoring, rear cross-traffic avoidance assist, driver attention warning, lane-following assist, and safe exit warning, which helps prevent you from opening a door and nailing a cyclist who’s coming up alongside.

Seating is for five, and rear-seat legroom is reasonable if not overly generous. Those rear seat cushions flip up, revealing a storage bin under them.

From the front, the Santa Cruz is unmistakable, although I’ll be polite and simply say its Lego-look grille and unusual lighting is “interesting.” It’s much more of a looker from the rear, with its arrow-shaped taillights, embossed tailgate, and bumper steps shamelessly grabbed from GM’s trucks – albeit without the box-top hand-holds on a Silverado or Colorado to help pull yourself up. Mind you, since the Santa Cruz is considerably smaller than those, you don’t need to lift up as far. The default wheels are 18-inch, which gives you more sidewall for tougher terrain, but asphalt aficionados will no doubt prefer the available 20-inch rims.

But the Santa Cruz isn’t in quite the same category either, with its wheels planted equally between condo and campground. Full-size trucks are still going to rule the Canadian market, but this little open-ended sport-ute could pull in a fair number of fans for its compact footprint and practicality. Even if traditional truck fans may not think so, there’s still going to be a lot of usefulness in this little “Truck Lite.”