2023 Hyundai Santa Cruz Preferred Review and Test Drive I The PERFECT mix of TRUCK and SUV?

Welcome back to the channel here. We're taking the 2023 Hyundai Santa Cruz Preferred Package out for a drive. We're gonna help you determine if this truck is gonna be the perfect vehicle for you. So special thanks to my friend, Ryan. He's over at Performance Hyundai in St. Catharines, Ontario. If you guys have any Hyundai-related questions, he's your guy. Reach out to him. We're gonna link their website in the description below. Special thanks to Ryan, but let's check out the front end of this Santa Cruz here. So Ryan's added a few accessories on this one here. You can see we have the hood guard here. That's gonna help prevent stone chips and bugs. In terms of headlights, I love how Hyundai's embedded the headlights right into the front grille. It kind of looks seamless and really makes it stand apart from the other Hyundai vehicles. And we have our large headlights right in the bottom there. So on this specific truck, they've upgraded the rims and the tires here, but normally from the factory, it's gonna come with 18-inch aluminum alloy rims. He's upgraded them, like I said. And then we come along to the side profile of the Santa Cruz. This one, you have a lot of darked-out accents. So you can see the roof rails are darked out. There's darked-out accents on the front. We have our LED turning accents right on our mirror, which is body colored for this exterior white. LED taillights on the trunk here. And this is the value of the Santa Cruz. You have this versatile cargo bed here. You can drop it. I like how the tailgate dampens. We have a couple cup holders here. We have our bed liner. And then this is our latch here. So the tunnel cover is actually spring-loaded, which is really neat. Pretty easy to tuck away there. And then you have more features as well. He's got a bit of gear in here. There you go. You go camping, you can put your lawn chair in there. There's a little hidden storage. Your tailgate, and you put some beer in there. And you got a little locker there. And there's one on the other side. There's also bed lighting as well. And you have this utility track to tie whatever you need down. So that's the value here. Versatile trunk. Like I said, easy to close. But look at this. If you only want it to open halfway, it's gonna open halfway. So that's the value. That's my favorite feature. And then you have this step here if you need to get in and access your cargo area. So this one is the 2023 Santa Cruz MSRP 40,299 here in Canada preferred package. In terms of the power plan, this one's gonna come with a 2.5 liter turbocharged four cylinder engine. Gonna give you about 281 horsepower and 311 pounds feet of torque. So not bad. I never even thought that there'd be such a small engine in a pickup truck, but here we are in 2023. 10.6 liters per every 100 kilometers combined. That's about 21 MPG. It's equipped with a CVVT, continuously variable valve transmission. And this one obviously comes with the H-track all wheel drive. So pretty decent power plan. You have features like the multi-drive mode where you can control your different modes for driving here. And there's also a terrain mode. So I can do with like a normal mode, a sport mode and a smart mode, which kind of adapts to you personally. And then you can control the terrain. So there's a snow mode, a mud and sand mode, but whatever you're doing should meet your needs. 5,000 pounds of towing, can't go wrong. If you're towing a small trailer or anything like that, pop-up trailer, bike racks, things like that, it should get the job done. Even a little boat. Checking out the back of the Santa Cruz. Let's hop in here and see how we feel. That cloth, sport cloth interior continues throughout. I'm 5'9". I still have quite a bit of space. It's not like what you would get in like a crew cab F-150 where there's like a small apartment back here, but there still is quite a space. So I think a family of four is the perfect fit for this. Five people back here, it would get a little tight. There is this little dinky rear window as well. Very small, but we'll just give you a bit more air into the car. In terms of safety features, even though this is one of the lower packages, it does come with quite a bit of safety features. You have things like the lane follow assistant. You have the lane keeping assistant, driver attention warning, high beam assist, rear occupancy alert. You have the blind spot collision avoidance system all through Hyundai. Safe exit warning as well. And you have the intelligent speed limit assist. So pretty impressed with all the safety features on here. Let's talk about the wheel. You have telescopic wheel in and out, up and down on this car. Did I just say car, truck? Comment below, what do you guys call on this thing? Is it a car? Is it a truck? Is it a crossover? It's kind of an amphibian here. So on the business end, we have this nice little rounded wheel here, paddle shifters right on the wheel. And we do have this large 10 inch display here. So it will come equipped with like obviously your nav, which is really cool that you get that on this lower package. You have Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. And then you can do things like Bluetooth audio streaming if you don't want to connect to those. Serious satellite radio. There's a whole different drive modes. And then I like this, how it's all laid out here with the heating. My only downside I have, I see this in a lot of cars, this kind of gloss finish that they have on interior trims. It looks great when it's clean, but when it's dirty, you can see every little dust and fingerprint all along this gloss, that black. That's kind of my Cars Unlocked beef there for you. The front seats are manual. So it's a six way manual adjustable driver's seat. You have heated seats and a heated steering wheel as well. Time for the exciting part is taking it for a spin. Now, before we do, I want to let you guys know about our $5,000 giveaway. There's a few ways you can enter our giveaway. Very easy. You just need to subscribe to this channel. You can go on Instagram and follow me on Instagram. You can go on TikTok and follow me on TikTok. Enter the giveaway. We're on the road to 50,000 subscribers. Once we hit 50,000 subscribers, we're going to draw the names and hopefully you'll win. We'll see you there. Let's get this thing on the road. The backup camera comes on automatically when you put it in reverse and you have these guidance lines. That's going to help while you're parking to a trailer or anything like that, backing up to a trailer. So the camera's actually pretty good. They kind of cut away a little bit of the screen here. It's only a small camera and you can do a couple of wide angles. There's your bird's eye angle and there's your wide angle. So it's very hard to compare the drive to this to any other truck. Like I'd say it drives more like the Hyundai Tucson is what I'd say. And that's kind of what you're going for here. Acceleration wise, that turbo does punch. Like when you put your foot down, that turbo will punch very, very well. So if you're worried about acceleration from a small four cylinder, I think you'll be fine in that regards. Handling wise, it is a little lighter steering. Like it's not a stiff steering. It's very light to steer. Overall, I'd say it's not bad. I mean, you're not going to be doing work on your farm and things like that with this truck. You're going to be more so doing activities. That's the difference. Like don't think this as a work truck for you to haul lumber and build your deck or things like that. This is more so for families that want to go to the trailer. Here's a quick little three point turn and not bad. It comes out of the turns very well. A little skittish on the front end there, but I did put the foot down quite a bit. One thing I'm missing here is just a straight volume knob. Like a straight volume knob would be good to have. I mean, you have these buttons. You can hold it down and there's your sound system right there. It actually sounds pretty good coming out of the HD radio, but I just like a traditional power and volume knob to get the radio going. Comfort wise, the seats are pretty comfortable. I'm pretty impressed with the seats. You have this nice cloth interior. I don't mind it. The seats are pretty big. I'd like to see a bit more softer surfaces around the interior. That's kind of one thing that Hyundai is known for. They don't have a lot of soft surfaces. Everything is kind of hard, but overall, not too bad. Cars Unlocked, fun fact. Hyundai's actually embedded this subtle designed in California stamp here. That's a tribute to where the Santa Cruz was initially designed at their design facility in Irvine, California. Just a six hour drive from Santa Cruz, California. So that's a wrap on your 2023 Hyundai Santa Cruz. Now be sure to check out my video of the Ultimate. If you want to see the higher package, I'm going to link it in the description below. As always, thanks to my boy Ryan over at Performance Hyundai and let us know what you guys think. Put it in the comments. Is this the right truck for you? Or would you consider the Ford Maverick? We'll see you in the next video.