Here’s How Hyundai’s Upcoming Toyota Tacoma-Fighting Midsize Pickup Truck Could Look

Hyundai showed off its body-on-frame Boulder Concept at the New York International Auto Show last week, where it confirmed a midsize pickup truck will be the first vehicle we can expect from this new line. This pickup will theoretically arrive by 2030—but that’s quite far away, and we’re impatient, so we whipped up a rendering of how we think the truck could look based on the Boulder’s design language.

On the show floor, Hyundai design chief SangYup Lee drew attention to the Boulder’s pixelated front light signature. It’s a look that bedazzles the retro-futuristic Hyundai Ioniq 5 and 6, so we’re excited to see a pickup truck potentially wear it.

Notably, the Boulder Concept has coach-style doors, but these never make it to production, so our imagined production truck has traditional front-hinged doors for both front and rear passengers. The door handles are also chunky manual ones, as we don’t imagine the pickup crowd to be particularly receptive to avant-garde electronic door handles. And because we insist on removable doors at a minimum, regular handles just make everything easier.

We also kept the side mirrors mounted to the doors as a nod to the Jeep Gladiator.

Our imagined Hyundai midsize pickup in profile. Rendering credit: Andrei Avarvarii

The truck we’ve illustrated here could be the most extreme off-road version (the new XRT hero? a Tacoma Trailhunter hunter?), since it keeps the Boulder’s chunky 37-inch tires, massive ground clearance, and overhead light bar. We added some red tow points at the front for some extra trail flair. More mainstream versions will surely have lower ground clearance, smaller wheels and tires, and probably no tow points.

When it goes on sale, the yet-unnamed Hyundai pickup could be the David against the Toyota Tacoma’s Goliath. This is not to say Hyundai is some small and unknown automaker, but it’s never built a body-on-frame midsize pickup for the American market before, and the Tacoma has dominated the segment forever.

But as we’ve pointed out previously, Hyundai has a proven track record of building quality products once it sets its mind to it. We’ll see how close we got to imagining what the real truck looks like after more official information and images of the pickup begin trickling out.