2025 Hyundai Santa Cruz Expert Review
Reviewed by Billy Rehbock
Every era of car history has its version of a mullet on four wheels. At one point there was the Chevrolet El Camino, a cross between a station wagon and a pickup. Later, Subaru offered the Baja, which poached its unibody platform from the Legacy and Outback. Hyundai has taken up that mullet mantle with the Santa Cruz, which is essentially a Tucson SUV with a pickup truck bed. This vehicular chimera receives a major update with revised interior and exterior design, more technology including bigger available screens, and a better equipped XRT off-road model. Its closest competitor is the only other compact pickup truck on the market: the Ford Maverick. The Hyundai could also be cross-shopped with midsize pickup trucks including the Chevrolet Colorado, Honda Ridgeline, Ford Ranger, and Toyota Tacoma.
What’s New
- Updated exterior with redesigned headlights, grille, daytime running lights, and wheel designs
- Revised XRT off-road trim
- Exterior colors Rockwood Green and Canyon Red
- New towing drive mode for Limited and XRT with 2.5-liter turbocharged powertrain
- Interior design updates with bigger available screens
- Available Medium Gray seat upholstery
- Rear seat center armrest with cupholders
- Forward Attention Warning driver focus monitor
- Wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto for every trim level
- Software and firmware over-the-air updates
- Memory system for front seats and side mirrors
- Digital key
- USB-Type-C ports
- Hyundai Pay in-car payment system
- Fingerprint scanner
What We Think
Smaller trucks have made something of a comeback in recent years, with the growth of midsize and compact segments underneath the well-established class of full-size models. The Hyundai Santa Cruz, which arrived for 2022, is a part of this trend. We’ve enjoyed the Santa Cruz’s attractive styling, engaging road manners, and utility ever since we tested it for the first time. It seems like Hyundai has pushed its formula for the Santa Cruz even further with the 2025 model-year update.
The Santa Cruz’s greatest weakness is the Ford Maverick, a compact rival with outstanding value and an available hybrid powertrain. Ford’s pickup isn’t quite as upscale as the post-refresh Santa Cruz, a differentiation that could be enough to sway buyers into the driver’s seat of Hyundai’s truck.
Performance and MPGs
Hyundai continues to offer two engine options for the 2025 Santa Cruz. Lower trims are motivated by a 2.5-liter four-cylinder engine developing 191 hp and 181 lb-ft of torque. This powerplant is paired with an eight-speed automatic transmission and a choice of front- or all-wheel drive. Highway fuel economy has improved relative to the 2024 model’s EPA rating of 21-22/25-26 mpg city/highway. This year's numbers are 30 mpg highway with FWD and 29 mpg with AWD.
Stepping up to higher trims adds the turbocharged 2.5-liter four-cylinder engine, raising output to 281 hp and 311 lb-ft of torque. All versions of the Santa Cruz with this more powerful setup receive a standard eight-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission and all-wheel drive. Limited and XRT models with this powertrain feature a new towing drive mode for 2025. With the turbo engine and AWD, the Santa Cruz can tow up to 5,000 pounds.
While we haven’t tested the naturally aspirated version of the Hyundai Santa Cruz, the turbo model sprints from 0-60 mph in 6.3 seconds, or 6.5 seconds for the XRT model. For 2025, this powertrain returns 19/27 mpg city/highway except with the XRT, which gets 18/26 mpg.
Updated Santa Cruz XRT: More Capable Than Before?
Hyundai’s off-road style models wear the XRT name. For 2024, the Santa Cruz XRT joined the range with a number of cosmetic touches. Rolling on multi-tone wheels with orange anodized center caps and 245/60R19 Kumho Crugen HP71 all-season tires, the Santa Cruz XRT looks tougher than other trims in the lineup. Bodywork changes include black accents all around the exterior and trim-specific badging. A standard turbocharged engine, an eight-speed automatic transmission, all-wheel drive, wider fender cladding, and a 5,000-pound towing rating round out the upgrades.
Hyundai wasn’t finished with the Santa Cruz XRT, however, because even more updates arrive for the trail-ready model this year. Although some of these updates are cosmetic, others point to increased capability. Exterior changes include new XRT-specific front and rear bumper fascia designs, grille, and front tow hooks. The new bumper covers allow increased approach angles. The 2025 XRT also receives new running gear, namely trim-specific 18s on 245/60R18 all-terrain tires (instead of all-seasons for 19s). A 360-degree camera, blind-spot view monitor, and XRT logos on the front upper seatbacks are also included. As before, the Santa Cruz XRT is still great to drive.
Safety Ratings and Features
An attention monitor that employs a steering column-mounted camera focused on the driver’s face is available for the 2025. It supplements the Santa Cruz’s standard SmartSense suite of features including blind-spot monitoring, automatic emergency braking, lane keep assist, and rear occupant alert. Adaptive cruise control and parking sensors should also be available.
As with the pre-refresh model, this Santa Cruz performs well in safety tests. This year’s version claims an IIHS 2024 Top Safety Pick award, the institute’ s second-highest accolade. The Santa Cruz also receives an NHTSA five-star overall safety rating.
Cargo Space and Interior Room
The 2025 Hyundai Santa Cruz should enter the new model year with the same interior dimensions as the pre-refresh model. Its closest rival, the Ford Maverick, has more legroom and bed volume. The midsize Honda Ridgeline, which also uses a unibody platform, has the most bed volume out of this trio.
Technology
Hyundai gives the 2025 Santa Cruz’s dash a big makeover, starting with its new curved display which is capable of housing the truck’s new available 12.3-inch gauge cluster and infotainment interface screens. It also gets a new center stack with revised switchgear and new air vents, plus there's a new steering wheel.
Wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are standard on all models now, as is support for over-the-air updates. Other available features include Hyundai’s BlueLink+ streaming services, app-based digital key, fingerprint scanner, and the Hyundai Pay in-car payment system, which can among other things allow its user to pay for parking from the infotainment screen.
Trim Levels and Prices
The 2025 Hyundai Santa Cruz is available with five trims this year: SE, SEL, SEL Activity, XRT, and Limited. Pricing starts just over $30,000 for the base model, while the top trim level stickers for a little over $44,000.
