Hyundai announced that the Santa Cruz model, which was launched in 2021 and updated in 2025, will not be renewed again.
According to Automotive News, Hyundai is phasing out its Santa Cruz compact pickup.
The Santa Cruz is projected to sell six fewer units than its only direct competitor, the Ford Maverick, by 2025.
Despite struggling to compete with the Maverick, Hyundai aims to move up a class and plans a mid-size truck with a body by the end of the decade.
UPDATE 29.01.2026: A Hyundai spokesperson offered the following statement to Car and Driver: “As with all Hyundai vehicles, long-term product portfolio planning is driven by a number of factors, including consumer demand and overall market trends. We do not comment on future product speculation.”
According to Automotive News, Hyundai is preparing to phase out the Santa Cruz. The compact pickup is currently in its fifth model year, but the automaker wants to replace it with a larger alternative.
Production of the Santa Cruz is expected to continue through this year and will likely wind down in the first quarter of 2027. A source told AN that the decision was driven by weak sales and an inflated inventory of trucks.
The Santa Cruz was outsold by its only direct competitor, the Ford Maverick, by more than six to one in 2025. For the 2025 calendar year, Ford sold 155,051 Maverick pickups to the Hyundai Santa Cruz’s 25,499. Weak sales left Hyundai with roughly five months of inventory at the end of the year, according to AN. Because of that, the automaker is scaling back production in the first quarter of 2026.
The Santa Cruz is a unibody model built from a stretched Tucson crossover. Against a backdrop of the truck’s lack of success in the marketplace, Hyundai recently confirmed plans to build a larger truck in the future, expected to be a mid-size body-on-frame truck due at the end of the decade. This larger pickup will compete against heavyweights such as the Ford Ranger, Toyota Tacoma, and Chevrolet Colorado, all of which have years of goodwill and loyal fan bases.
While nothing is confirmed yet, Hyundai’s mid-sizer will likely share a number of components with the Kia Tasman body-on-frame pickup that launched in late 2024. Using Toyota’s lineup as the guideline, the new platform could also spawn a body-on-frame SUV, similar to the Tacoma/4Runner relationship.
