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Hyundai’s little Santa Cruz ute, launched in North America after being revealed as a sleek silver concept in 2015, has been eyed resting at the company’s Australian headquarters in Sydney.
Hopeful, if not confident, our team quickly got on the horn to the brand’s local communications boss Guido Schenken to see if we’d stumbled onto some good news.
Of course, with the car-based ute parked in plain sight, it was unlikely to be a hint of any coming market launch.
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2015 Hyundai Santa Cruz concept
As if sensing our call, Schenken was quick to offer comment – and while it wasn’t the “damn, you caught us” admission we’d been hoping for, it wasn’t a complete dismissal.
“We have two LHD Santa Cruz utes which recently arrived at our head office in Sydney. These vehicles will be used for local market evaluation,” he said.
“This does not mean we have confirmed a ute/pickup for Australia – in fact it’s very much the opposite. We are unlikely to see Santa Cruz built in right-hand drive.”
The phrase “local market evaluation” piqued our interest. Schenken’s comments suggest that while the Santa Cruz will probably not make it here, the brand is at least making sure it has solid insight on how our market might respond to any similar offering in the future.
“We continually bring in vehicles, which are not part of our local model range, for research and engineering purposes – we understand the extra interest Santa Cruz generates, but in reality it’s not special or significant that these vehicles are here.”
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The Santa Cruz in the same 'sage green' as the ute we spied in Sydney
So, for now, we can hold out hope for a second-generation Santa Cruz – although we wouldn’t expect to see that until sometime around 2026, if it happens at all.
Maybe, in the meantime, Hyundai’s cheeky stablemate Kia will upstage it with a small ute of its own, based on the Santa Cruz and positioned beneath the already confirmed ladder-frame ute we’ve recently spied testing.
And, if Ford’s own little rival the Maverick ends up coming to Australia (however unlikely), Hyundai may end up wishing it had built right-hand-drive markets into its original Santa Cruz plan.
Hyundai’s own design boss, SangYup Lee, has told Wheels Media that he’d love to see how the Santa Cruz might appeal to Aussie buyers – particularly as he lived in Melbourne for a couple of years when working on the reborn Camaro with Holden.
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Speaking with Daniel Gardner in 2020, SangYup said “I love Australian car culture – it’s very diverse, it’s very unique, there’s V8s, and I keep it in my mind that the design also will work in Australia”.
“I always keep in my mind the ute culture that Australia has and nowhere else has. I know the car design tastes of Australian people.”
In the meantime, buyers can at least look forward to “a real bloody ute” joining the Hyundai range in Australia. Or at least, that’s the last word offered on the topic. Speaking with Tim Robson way back in 2019 when he first took the gig, new HMCA chief operating officer John Kett was exceedingly clear on the plan.
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How about a Kia-badged version of the Santa Cruz?
“What’s clear to us is that if we’re going to bring a ute out, it had better be a ute. We’ve got past the first hurdle of what it needs to look like, but it needs to be functional as well. That’s the important part,” Kett said.
“We’re going down that pathway and we’re working towards it. We just have to make sure that when it arrives, it’s a bloody ute.”
Not much has been offered since then, but with Kia now very openly testing the Ranger-sized ute it will undoubtedly bring to Australia, Hyundai may not be far behind on revealing its own plans.
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Kia's upcoming new ute
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Our take on how the Kia ute might look...
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