is a brand-new pickup truck that's designed to compete against the likes of the Ford Maverick, but Hyundai didn't knock it out of the park. Here's a look at the specific reason why the 2022 Hyundai Santa Cruz earned a low Consumer Reports rating.
The 2022 Hyundai Santa Cruz is actually good in a lot of areas
One of the best things about the Santa Cruz is how it drives. This is largely thanks to how Hyundai designed the Santa Cruz, as it has a unibody design
. Unibody designs are more common in sedans, and as a result, the Santa Cruz drives like a car rather than a truck.
The Santa Cruz's engines also deliver a good amount of power for a truck of its size. It starts with a 2.5-liter four-cylinder that gets 191 horsepower, but drivers can upgrade it to a turbocharged four-cylinder that gets 281 horsepower. This upgraded engine not only improves its towing capacity but also makes the Santa Cruz an actually fun truck to drive.
Thanks to those positive features, the Santa Cruz scored a 77 out of 100 in its road test, a 4 out of 5 in its acceleration score, and a 4 out of 5 in its predicted owner satisfaction score. Despite those scores, the Santa Cruz only had an overall score of about 59 out of 100.
That low overall score was largely thanks to the low predicted reliability score that the Santa Cruz received. This new Hyundai truck only received a predicted reliability score of 2 out of 5, and that's obviously not good.
What this means for the 2022 Hyundai Santa Cruz going forward
This isn't all bad news, however. Since the Santa Cruz is such a new truck, there's not much info about how reliable it actually is. Instead, Consumer Reports' predicted reliability score is a prediction that's based on the automaker's track record with reliability.
Hyundai is certainly not perfect when it comes to the reliability of its cars. For example, the Santa Fe was recently recalled due to an issue that created a risk of a fire. Other recent recalls from Hyundai may have influenced the Santa Cruz's predicted reliability score.
Other trucks in the segment also don't have a great predicted reliability score, too. The Chevy Colorado, the GMC Canyon, and the Nissan Frontier all have a predicted reliability score that's about the same as the Santa Cruz's. Obviously, the Santa Cruz's predicted reliability score isn't ideal, but it simply doesn't mean that it's an unreliable car.
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