2023 Hyundai Santa Cruz Limited Review, and Test Drive! Is this the ULTIMATE adventure truck?

Not quite a truck, not quite an SUV. My name is Christopher, this is Cars Unlocked. Today we're going to go through the 2023 Hyundai Santa Cruz to help you determine if it's the perfect utility vehicle for you. Checking out the front end here. This one is the ultimate package of the Santa Cruz and when you look at the front end you can tell they really went with this kind of new futuristic look on the front. We have this super large gray Hyundai emblem and then we have the black front grille here and these are our daytime running lights and then you have your LED headlights right here. So a little different headlight setup and lighting setup. You have features like automatic high beam assistant and you have your automatic on and off headlights. On the inside of the Santa Cruz you see a lot of black. Like that's one thing that I noticed right away. Everything is pretty much black here but it doesn't look bad with the exterior. I just feel it might be hard to keep clean. You do have a few soft surfaces on the door panel. Eight-way power adjustable driver's seat. You have just one sunroof up top which is nice to see in a pickup truck. So it does feel like an SUV. That's like the biggest thing is you don't feel like you're in a large truck. You feel like you're still in kind of a crossover. Let's check out the side profile of the Santa Cruz here. What's new for 2023 is on this ultimate package you get these black 20-inch aluminum alloy rims and it does contrast great with our wheel flares and our Thunder Flares here down below. You also have these black kind of individualized step rails for each door. Depending on the color this one is obviously in the black exterior color. You get your black handles or your body matching handles. You have black roof rails at the top. Our mirrors are black. We do have LED accents and turning signals on the mirrors and we have our camera right on the mirror. You do get with this ultimate package the blind spot monitor as well to help you when you're driving on the highway. Jumping into the back seat. You can see the doors don't open like 90 degrees. The doors do have a small opening so it could be a struggle if you have to mount some car seats in here. But you do have the anchors for your car seats. You get that leather all throughout the car and then there is hidden storage under the well there. So right under the seat there's a little storage well for you to store some items. When I get in the back here I'm 5'9 and I feel pretty comfortable. You know my knees aren't hitting the driver's seat. There is a hard back on the seats. There's two USBs back here, cup holder, phone storage in the door. So not bad. This would perfectly equip like a family of four on the long trip. So Hyundai has branded this as like the perfect utility pickup truck. Perfect for things like tailgating. Perfect for those weekend warriors. People that go away to the trailer and things like that. Maybe you don't have a day-to-day use for a pickup truck but you do want that utility when you need it. And when you look at the back and you get to the back, utility is what this is all about. There's so many different functions of the tailgate and of the bed. I can't wait to show you guys. First of all you can see we do have the step there right built into the back bumper which is pretty neat. The back bumper does have this kind of non-slip grip on it. So if you are stepping up you can access the tailgate. The tailgate automatically drops. You just got to give it a little go. It's a dampened tailgate which I like and this is something that everybody talks about is this tunnel cover. So it's a spring-loaded tunnel cover and it just drops back there and you can really put it wherever you want and you can lock it into place. Now you have a four-foot bed but really this does lack a little bit of space. So it's similar to the size of a trunk of an SUV. The only thing is is there's no ceiling. You have a leather-wrapped wheel here, paddle shifters on the wheel. Let's talk about the tech. So one thing I like is you do have the digital gauge cluster right behind here which is great. You can do things like your trip computer, you have your tachometer there, your fuel economy and then your all-wheel drive settings and your safety settings which we're going to jump into once we take it for a spin. And then this one comes with this 10-inch touchscreen display. Now they did go with kind of like similar to the Kia display here. No knobs or anything. All buttons here for our navigation, for our radio controls. But there's a ton you can do with this Ultimate Package. You have your Android Auto, you have your Apple CarPlay, you do have all of your POIs and things like that. And then our heating is just down below here. So digital temperature control with this Ultimate Package. You also have heated seats and air-conditioned seats which is nice for the summertime. Heated steering wheel controls as well and then traditional shifter. So I like that in a truck to have a traditional shifter. I know most cars are coming with kind of unique shifters or buttons nowadays. So I do like that. Wireless phone charging as well right in the center console. You can charge your phone up and then you also have the two USBs and then there's your 12-volt accessory there. So two cupholders perfect for the Yeti. And then let's check out the backup camera. So you have that full bird's-eye view, you have your full camera, you have multiple camera angles here. This is perfect if like you're towing, linking up a trailer. That's your side profile and that's your wide angle. I've been actually dying to try one of these things but before we take it on the road, if you guys are loving the content and you want to see more videos like this, make sure you hit that subscribe button because we post videos every Tuesday and Saturday. And of course comment what you think of this Santa Cruz in the comment section. Now this specific one being the ultimate package, it has an MSRP of $49,754 and I do want to mention that this specific one is for sale and this one is actually a 2023 pre-owned or demo. It has 7,000 kilometers on it. So if you want to purchase this one, contact myself or my friends at Cardinal Kia in Niagara Falls. We're going to link their information in the description below. This one does have like the 2.4 liter turbocharged engine. You get that h-track all-wheel drive system as well. So it has 281 horsepower. So pretty decent power plan that they've put into this and when you go up to this ultimate, you can go up from the regular ones without the turbo. So it definitely took off pretty well and now we're just cruising. 311 pounds feet of torque, 4.3 foot bed like I'm going to go through all the ins and outs with you in the back. It does drive pretty well. Like I'm pretty impressed and how smooth it drives. For fuel economy, we've got 10.8 liters per every 100 kilometers combined between the city and the highway. That's about 22.1 miles per gallon. So decent fuel economy for a pickup truck. One thing we feel like we do feel close to each other. Like am I really close to you guys right now? It feels like they took just the cabin of like a Kia Forte and put it right into this Santa Cruz or the cabin of like a Hyundai Elantra and put it right into this Santa Cruz. That's kind of the space that you're you're feeling to give you some perspective. There's a little trunk right under the bed here actually and you can throw some ice in there. Keep your drinks cold. There is a drain if you want to drain the water out and you can see right when I open it the bed lighting comes on. So perfect at night time. You know when the game's done and you want to come back to your truck and empty it out before you take off. There's a lot of tie down hooks here and there's a few on the track here which are all adjustable and they just lock into place. And then there also is some hidden storage as well on each side of the bed. So very versatile bed. It's not as big as obviously going up to a mid-sized truck and some of the competitors like the Tacomas, the Frontiers and your Colorados. But you do have that option to have a bed when you need it. Your turning indicator when you pop that on that camera comes on for your blind spot. So I do like that tech that Hyundai has. Right when you signal to change lanes your blind spot camera comes on. This one does come with the lane follow assistant as well. The lane keep assistant. It comes with all the safety features like the rear cross traffic alert and you can lock that in using the controls on the steering wheel here. So pretty decent. You can see I've kind of locked it in now and it will just follow along on the lane here and then you can use the cruise control to keep you a safe distance from the car in front of you. Paddle shifters are good especially if you're towing and you have multiple drive modes. So right now it's in a smart mode and then you have a snow mode. You can see there's a mud mode, a sand mode, sport mode, normal mode. There's a few different drive modes that you can select using the controls in the center stack and on the wheel. So overall I'm pretty impressed with the acceleration too. Like that's one thing I can't get over. Here we're popping up to about 100. So not bad. You have that speed sign recognition as well. It will tell you what the speed limit is of the area that you're in. This one being the Ultimate, you do get the Bose audio sound system and you have the eight speakers here. Let's see how it sounds. Okay, doesn't sound too bad. The lack of knobs makes it a little hard. Like it's all just on the buttons here. I do like me just a classic volume knob but there's a little speed wagon for you. It doesn't sound too bad. You can adjust the settings how you want and the benefit of this like small turning radius as well. So with these little trucks it does like it seriously drives like a crossover. So it's up to you guys to decide like if you need this. If you don't have a specific need for a truck and you kind of just want to have the best of both worlds, I can see this being a great option. Now the demand for these is really high. You have to order it right now and wait a handful of months. So definitely get your order in if you're looking to purchase one of these. My personal opinion on it, this would be cool. Like I don't very often find like the need for a truck. We talked about the tailgating and how it's the perfect tailgating stuff. How often do I tailgate? Once a summer, twice a summer, if that. And normally if I'm tailgating I ain't the one driving to the tailgate because I'm going to be doing most of the drinking. So do I need like a specific truck for tailgating? No. Do I need a truck specifically for anything? I know this one can tow about 5,000 pounds so that is great. It's tough to justify but I do like the fact that you have the best of both worlds. Not quite an SUV, not quite a truck and that is pretty cool to be able to use that bed back there. But the bed is small so a lot to consider. You guys comment your thoughts on this truck or is it a crossover? Like I still don't really know the answer. Like I said it's the best of both worlds. 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