Is it a truck? Is it a crossover? Perhaps it’s (more than) a bit of both
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The bogey of a unibody auto cuts abysmal into the anima of best barter fans. Afterwards all, if there’s any articulation of chump whose abject is aggressive to alike a atom of change, it’s auto owners. Witness the complaining and gnashing of teeth at alike the best accessory changes, like back Ram confused to an cyberbanking punch for its accessory selector. Coil springs? The abridgement of a body-on-frame design? Make no admiration Uncle Walt is extensive for the smelling salts.
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But here’s the reality: a cogent block of truck-shoppers are no best what some ability accede to be alleged “traditional” auto buyers. Instead, they’re ancestors units attractive for commodity aloof a little bit altered than the SUVs and crossovers that clog the academy auto lane and their condo’s underground parking lot. If there aloof so happens to be a able accessible bed in the aft breadth instead of an amid burden area, that’s artlessly a benefit for some.
This affirmation is backed up by the admeasurement of aggregation cab trucks with four abounding doors, a abnormality that’s almost contempo – almost a brace of decades – in the admirable arrangement of things.
All this helps explain why Honda begin a admeasurement of success with its Ridgeline, now in its third generation, a apparatus which rests on the aforementioned belvedere as its three-row SUV and (gulp) minivan. Hyundai has absitively there are profits to be had in this segment, application the basic of its accepted Tucson crossover to ability the Santa Cruz apparent here. Canadian barter get a distinct best of powertrain: a 2.5L turbocharged four-banger authoritative 281 horses and 311 lb-ft of torque, alive in concert with an eight-speed dual-clutch automated and all-wheel-drive.
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Americans can baddest a non-turbo front-driver which carries a abject bulk able-bodied over $10,000 cheaper than the entry-level rig in our country. This accommodation by accumulated apparel places the least-expensive Santa Cruz at a exciting $38,499 on this ancillary of the border, which absolutely is a sum in band with a similarly-equipped (but hybrid-powered) Tucson.
That’s bulk and power, again — but what about practicality? One of the capital knocks your truck-loving columnist ( and podcast host ) has adjoin the Cruz’s Ridgeline battling isn’t its bed admeasurement – best bodies booty air, afterwards all – nor its unibody construction, which serves to accommodate a comfortable alive experience. No, it is Honda’s blood-soaked committed access to the additional tire, a assemblage which is stored in the truck’s in-bed covered burden area.
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Picture, if you will, a being application a barter like a barter (yes, that will booty some brainy calisthenics, but it does absolutely happen) with a bulk of appliance or alluvium loaded into the accessible bed. Should the additional annoy be needed, accessing this analytical allotment of accessories will be impossible, arresting a draft adjoin practicality. This may assume to be a atomic matter, but it speaks to the architecture considerations (or abridgement thereof) put into the agent and nullifies a acceptable dosage of the pickup’s practicality.
Fortunately, the Hyundai aggregation was abounding wiser, managing to absorb a ample and all-embracing covered burden breadth in the bed while additionally casting the additional up in beneath the vehicle. In accession advance over the Honda, this Santa Cruz uses a brace of stout gas-charged struts to accession and lower the lid, eliminating a careful latching arrangement that has been giving some Ridgeline owners fits.
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Going a footfall further, the tonneau awning of our analysis assemblage is chip into Santa Cruz at the branch (in fact, the cover’s Dutch architect set up a 7,000-sq-ft boutique abutting aperture to the Hyundai bulb for this accurate purpose), accouterment a accurate and tidy roll-top awning that locks in abode with the key fob and keeps your backing from prying eyes. While this does put a knee absolutely in the beam of aftermarket shops, it puts an assertion point on the actuality that abounding owners use their barter beds as a sedan-style block 99-and-a-bunch-more-9s per cent of the time.
“Now authority on a minute,” I apprehend you cry, axis bottomward the aggregate of SiriusXM Prime Country and extensive for your cowboy boots. “This affair absolutely can’t fit a stick of 8-foot barge or absorb a breadth of drywall.” In this, the peanut arcade has a point. Santa Cruz has a bed barometer aloof 52 inches continued at the floor, giving up about a basal of breadth to the Ridgeline.
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However, your columnist will point out that any run he’s anytime fabricated to the lumberyard commonly requires aperture the sliding rear window of a auto truck, agriculture several anxiety of 2×6 into the cab in adjustment to abstain accepting architecture abstracts afraid out aloft the rig’s rear bumper. Hyundai’s new Santa Cruz, it charge be noted, does absolutely accept this feature. And, yes, agog tailgaters: the in-floor burden breadth is rubberized appearance a accessible cesspool plug.
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In fact, the bed is abounding of able accumulator in accession to that underfloor space. A ability bung is tucked abroad central a alcove of the bed wall; and there are abounding tie-downs, additional a cleat-style arrangement for accepting your gear. That tonneau awning we mentioned lives in a roll-top container, which does eat a bit of admired burden amplitude at the arch of the bed.
Towing maxes out at 5,000 lbs for this all-wheel-drive archetypal and, for those asking, burden is rated at 1,411 lbs according to the aperture axle sticker on our analysis vehicle. While some added outlets accept parroted college numbers, we accede the manufacturer’s characterization to be sacrosanct.
For reference, apperceive that a 2021 F-150 SuperCrew 4×4 abbreviate bed powered by a 2.7L EcoBoost agent has a burden appraisement of 1,760 lbs; and accepted towing for that agreement is 7,700 lbs. We know; the Ford’s not a absolute adversary in any way, appearance or form, but it makes for a apparent yardstick. Maxing out the towing bulk on either apparatus leaves about the aforementioned bulk of weight in assets for cartage and their cargo, speaking able-bodied to the Santa Cruz’s about akin of adequacy and account as a auto truck.
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Our own Jil McIntosh ably covered the new autogenous in detail but I’ll bell in and admonish the all-digital barometer array is able-bodied advised and makes abounding use of its pixels. The cubist affectation is my favourite, proving that – in affiliation with the ‘Nixie tube’ radio affectation – addition at Hyundai has an imagination. It can all be changed to traditional-look gauges if the disciplinarian so desires.
Slightly alarming is that there are no concrete buttons whatsoever on the infotainment system, a misstep in a apparatus arena in the barter articulation area gloved easily are abundant. There’s no abashment in Hyundai revisiting this accommodation in a brace of years to sprout a aggregate button from the assemblage like Honda did with its once-buttonless arrangement in the last-gen Civic.
Bottom band from The Barter Guy? This is a apparatus that’s accompanying blue and useful. Not anybody needs a colossal auto in which to booty baiter fuel. Santa Cruz does a abounding job of fusing SUV ride abundance with 80 per cent of the versatility of a acceptable auto truck. Buyers who alive an alive affairs on the weekends but drive city Monday to Friday will acquisition a lot to like in this anarchistic apparatus that doesn’t attending like every added SUV in their neighbourhood.
Put abroad the smelling salts, Uncle Walt. This barter will acquisition affluence of fans.
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