New Hyundai Santa Cruz faces uphill trek

LOS ANGELES — Give Hyundai credit for courage.

The new Santa Cruz adventure vehicle now rolling into showrooms faces a U.S. market that has not been kind to small, car-based trucks with quirky styling — among them, the Dodge Rampage from 1980s and the Subaru Baja from the 2000s.

And tougher still, the Santa Cruz is coming to market just as a mighty competitor, the new Ford Maverick, goes into production. The Ford is also a crossover-based vehicle, but one that looks like it's ready for tougher jobs.

For all of Hyundai's "adventure vehicle" marketing and deliberate avoidance of the truck moniker, the Santa Cruz is a compact pickup, and so is the Maverick, though they may be intended for different audiences.

The Santa Cruz can handle 6-foot surfboards or mountain bikes with the cargo bed's tailgate up, and a 4-by-8-foot sheet of plywood or an adult-sized motorcycle with the tailgate down, according to a Hyundai presentation. It can also tow up to 5,000 pounds, which is more than the Ford.

The Maverick has a standard hybrid powertrain and starting price of $21,490 with shipping, a longer bed and a boxy truck look that will appeal to traditionalists. The Maverick beats the Santa Cruz on fuel economy and price. The Maverick also has the Ford name, imbued with generations of truck heritage.

But the Santa Cruz's California-designed exterior styling is less generic than the Ford's, and it contains the creature comforts of Hyundai's new-generation crossovers, such as digital displays and ventilated seats.

While both vehicles are full of innovations designed to do more with less, neither is a guaranteed success.

What's unclear is whether either can sustain much excitement beyond their initial launch, and whether consumers who have shunned truck-ish crossovers in the past are now ready to embrace them.

"The question is can either — or both — of them compel nontraditional truck buyers to give them a chance," said Karl Brauer, executive analyst at iSeeCars.com. "The Maverick is under less pressure to do this, as it can lean on the Ford nameplate to garner a base level of awareness and consideration.

"Hyundai is facing the larger challenge in finding buyers for its Santa Cruz," he said. "But over the past decade, the Korean automaker has a solid record of meeting these kind of challenges."

Jessica Caldwell, executive director for insights at Edmunds, echoed that skepticism. "This segment has come and gone in the U.S. with no automaker cracking the code for success," she said. "So if either company produces significant, lasting volumes, it will be a win."

The Santa Cruz is first to market, with the Maverick coming in the fall.

Ayman Moussa, CEO of Carnamic auto group in California, said customers have been asking about the first Santa Cruz delivered to his San Leandro Hyundai dealership in the Bay Area, but there have been no preorders yet. "I think it will sell well for its styling and price point," Moussa said. "It provides a much needed alternative in this segment outside the traditional makes."

The Santa Cruz is based on a new generation of the Tucson compact crossover that was stretched to accommodate a 4-foot bed. It is built at Hyundai's U.S. plant in Montgomery, Ala., on the same line as the Tucson and the midsize Santa Fe, which is closer in overall length to the pickup.

The most inexpensive Santa Cruz has a sticker price of $25,175 including with shipping, with front-wheel drive and a four-cylinder engine with 191 hp. The Limited trim with all-wheel drive and a turbocharged four-cylinder engine with 281 hp starts at $40,905 including shipping. The prices are roughly in line with those of the Tucson and Santa Fe — for a reason.

Hyundai insists that it's not betting on truck buyers to sell the Santa Cruz, but rather on crossover buyers who are looking for another option.

Olabisi Boyle, Hyundai Motor America's vice president of product planning and mobility strategy, said that company research shows there is a market for buyers who want a mix between a crossover and a pickup. About one-third of buyers who look at midsize pickups end up in a crossover or SUV, she said in a presentation.

"Pickup trucks are pricey, can lack cabin space, have poor fuel economy and their size often makes them unwieldy to park and maneuver around town," she said. "Our customer research also told us that midsize-pickup and compact-SUV owners have a lot in common."

While the Honda Ridgeline is also a crossover-based pickup, it's larger and more expensive than the Santa Cruz or the Maverick. The Ridgeline is based on the three-row Pilot and starts at $37,715 with shipping. Honda sold 26,725 Ridgelines through July, up from 18,004 in the same period of 2019 before the pandemic.

Sam Fiorani, vice president of vehicle forecasting at AutoForcast Solutions, thinks the Maverick can beat those Ridgeline numbers while the Santa Cruz is likely to come up short.

"The Maverick will be the big winner for two reasons," he predicted. "First, Ford has more capacity to produce their little truck. Second, Hyundai doesn't have the reputation to market pickups, while Ford has a century of history behind it."

But both models are launching into the industry's daunting shortage of semiconductors. Ford has suffered worse than Hyundai so far this year in terms of plant downtime because of chip shortages.

With proper access to chips, Fiorani forecasts, the Maverick will likely top 100,000 sales in 2022. Hyundai's product could find 30,000 to 40,000 buyers next year.

For Hyundai, that may be plenty. Those sales would essentially expand its growing market share and the popularity of its crossover lineup.

Stephanie Brinley, principal automotive analyst at IHS Markit, thinks having the Santa Cruz and Maverick launch around the same time could even be positive for both. "Having two vehicles of this ilk launching at the same time can be helpful to both Hyundai and Ford," she said. "With both companies putting marketing power behind the launch, buzz and attention is created for awareness of this new small-pickup segment."