Hyundai Santa Cruz Pickup Confirmed for 2021

Production on the new Hyundai Santa Cruz pickup will begin in 2021.

Hyundai is calling it an open-bed crossover, not a pickup
It will be built in Alabama
A 410-million investment will be made to prepare production of the Santa Cruz

The Hyundai Santa Cruz pickup is now confirmed. It will be built in Alabama starting in 2021 after a $410 million investment in Hyundai’s Montgomery, Alabama assembly plant. The plant currently builds the Santa Fe, Elantra and Sonata for the US market.

“Bringing the Santa Cruz to HMMA demonstrates that Hyundai Motor Company is confident our more than 3,000 Team Members are ready to build a quality crossover for the U.S. market,” said Hyundai Motor Manufacturing Alabama President and CEO Byungjin Jin. The Santa Cruz will result in 200 additional jobs being added to the Montgomery plant.

For now, this is unfortunately all the info we have on the new Santa Cruz pickup. No pictures were released and we have no idea what current Hyundai model will underpin the Santa Cruz or if Hyundai plans to create a new platform. That would be suprising, however, as either the Kona or Tucson could serve as a strong starting point for a small pickup.

The Santa Cruz will likely compete with the Honda Ridgeline, but we don’t see it taking on the Jeep Gladiator or Ford Ranger in terms of towing capacity. We probably won’t see a rugged off-road version either. The Santa Cruz will more than likely be very similar to Hyundai’s current small crossovers, with the main difference being a bed in the back as opposed to a hatch.

Still, we’ve been hoping to see the Hyundai Santa Cruz make it to production ever since the first concept was shown back in 2015. The latter looked real good and we can only hope it will inspire the production version.