5 Reasons to Buy a 2023 Hyundai Santa Cruz (Whats New?)

The 2023 Santa Cruz cannot quite claim the title as best all-around crossover, truck, or whatever, but its unique set of good and bad attributes does lend it strong appeal to certain people. Making it a standout when compared to the Ford Maverick, Honda Ridgeline, or any crossover.

I’m a fan of the new hyundai santa cruz but it is a polarizing utility vehicle i was pleasantly surprised by some of its attributes and outright disappointed by a couple others so today i’m going to try to explain those virtues along with everything new for 2023. for the new model year the base sc trim will now have blind spot monitoring and rear cross traffic

Alert there’s also a new night edition which is a decked out sel spec with the turbo engine and all-wheel drive as standard dark accents big 20 inch wheels and side steps along with that they tweaked the sand and white paints and for the sel premium trim which is sitting next to me you will now have the larger touch screen from the limited trim along with the more

Advanced smart cruise from that top spec this is something that will allow it to do stop and go in traffic along with using the navigation to help it with curve control and before i i go further if you enjoy fun detailed car content without fluff consider subscribing and hitting the bell for notifications the thing that actually shocked me the most about the new

Santa cruz the driving experience so you want to have very well calibrated steering it feels precise predictable there’s a hint of feedback thrown in there and i’m happy to report that hyundai actually kind of took this on more of the firm side of things when it comes to ride it doesn’t feel like subaru outback plush it helps it offset the weight and the center of

Gravity to keep body roll under control and despite that it’s comfortable you can take it over really bad roads and it takes it on the chin making it a great car for neglected city streets or winding mountain back roads and while i won’t make this its own reason because i don’t think this is a standout the 8.6 inches of ground clearance in fairly capable h track

All-wheel drive system should make this a willing partner on most forest service roads the main constraints seem to be the sub 18 degree approach angle lack of underbody protection and only fifty percent of the torque can go to the rear wheels the sudo lock feature just preemptively tells the system to send more torque to the back as it tends to hold a heavy front

Bias otherwise the next reason should not come as a surprise but it’s going to be the practical bed and storage solutions throughout so you’ll have a 52 inch box back there which isn’t exactly impressive notably shorter than the ridgeline and a hair smaller than the ford maverick but unlike the ford it has a underfloor trunk it does have a drain hole and you can

Fit some really small luggage a backpack and they also added two more cubbies on either side of the bed plus if you get the activity package or any of the turbo models you’re going to have a roll-up tonneau cover as standard you do have several tie down points in there as well allowing you to put maybe small dirt bikes in here and really actually utilize the space

As a bed because that short length is a limiting factor but if you’re as crafty as a dad with too much free time the santa cruz was designed so that you could haul 4×8 sheets of stuff in a pinch plus each truck gets a little built-in bumper step importantly this can tow up to five thousand pounds with the optional turbo and even 3500 and base engine front drive

Form making it a truly capable hauler if it needs to be and the standard composite material means they’re dense and rust are much much less of an issue and there’s still a couple other storage solutions like under seat storage in the back and a fair amount of cubbies in the cabin as well my next reason is the engine’s performance and the 8-speed dual clutch under

The hood you’ll have two engine options a 2.5 liter naturally aspirated direct injected and port fuel injected in line four or you can truck up the ego of your local v6 muscle car owner with a turbocharged 2.5 liter that makes 90 more horsepower and 130 more pound-feet of torque and comes with an 8-speed dual clutch hooked up to all-wheel drive this engine only

Comes on the knight sel premium and limited i’d also like to thank the friendly dealership royal on the east side here in bloomington indiana for letting me test a hyundai santa cruz they have an interesting pre-owned inventory like this and they also sell all of their new cars without a markup check them out now i haven’t driven the base model but i think at 191

Horsepower with eight different ratios to choose from with a torque converted automatic it should haul its own weight okay especially in front wheel drive form it just is a touch hefty which is why i’m glad that they offer the forced induction variant because here i was able to secure a 0-60 time of under six seconds and that was in spite of a really slow launch

Because these do not have launch control because why would it but it very quickly starts to get into a groove and show off its muscles and the dual clutch can both shift with haste during hard acceleration and change gears smoothly at all speeds my biggest gripe is that the throttle pedal often has a frustrating lag from a standstill now i know some of you think

Bad about hyundai dual clutches because in the past they would overheat and kind of hairy scenarios off-road but the old units were completely different and used a dry clutch this one is a wet clutch and it has proved to have much better thermal capacity and my next reason to pick up the hyundai santa cruz is very well thought out tech you’re going to have an 8-inch

Touchscreen as standard that’s going to come with wireless apple carplay and android auto but the regular ui works nicely and the screen itself has a good resolution and you pair this up with a nice set of analog gauges on the sc and sel available on sel’s standard on up is a 10 inch virtual gauge cluster with a fair amount of functions to it but great resolution and

It’s integrated into the dashboard in a pretty nice way and actually i do like kind of the swoopiness of the cabin now you can also upgrade that eight inch touchscreen to the 10.3 inch screen however you will sacrifice wireless apple carplay and android auto in the process you will also lose the physical controls for the hvac and radio making them all capacitive

Which is something i feel most people including myself find annoying and if i’m going to bring up tech i should also bring up that hyundai is among the best if not the best of the mainstream brands when it comes to their smart adaptive cruise control system that i talked about a little bit earlier and the last reason that makes this a very compelling suv truck

Thing is the wow factor whether it’s from the distinctive tucson front end or the angular looks that kind of continue around back the fun driving dynamics the punchy performance oddly techy interior swiss army bed or good towing it’s an interesting car with cool capabilities that make it even more practical but it’s not all good so now i need to kind of move into

The downsides of this thing and one of those is predicted reliability and i hope i’m wrong because i do really like this thing but it has suffered a fair amount of issues in its first model year most of them being powertrain related with people having a stalling issue a loss of power or in some cases failed transmissions it seems that i’m reading more issues on the

Turbo dct route but it’s not exclusive to that and there are a couple other miscellaneous reports with like issues with the headlights or the brakes and i would normally give a car the benefit of the doubt because a lot of times there are teething issues and some people think maybe it was just the cars built in 2021 except if we look at hyundai’s past it’s not super

Promising at the very least they do offer one of the most aggressive factory warranties out there but if reliability is one of your top priorities i can’t exactly recommend this thing yet but maybe in the future as it does seem like hyundai is again pay more attention with you know switching to the wet clutch and also switching to direct injection and port fuel

Injection for both of these engines so that you can have good efficiency and clean intake valves and the next drawback would be the interior plastic choice it just feels very cheap on the inside even here in with a upper thirty thousand dollar msrp at least it’s soft touch where your elbows rest but that’s about it and then they use a borderline obsessive amount

Of gloss black plastic that just gets kind of smudged dusty and gross i wish that the interior took a more rugged approach to this kind of vehicle or go more premium and not just neither you at least can get leather if you go with the top trim along with ventilated seats you’ll get lumbar adjustment on everything except for the base but then when we move to the

Back seat you also run into another problem that’s it’s cramped so this is about a foot longer than the tucson but more than that goes to the rear so they actually made the back seat tighter it’s not very comfortable either the seat back does not give you lumbar support stands pretty upright at the very least it’s good that someone my size can fit however most

Other crossovers and trucks offer a more combatable back seat you don’t get vents or usb ports unless you go for the top trim and then everything back there is kind of a hard touch plastic too another downside that’s more of a grievance on my part is when you have vehicles like these subaru baja or even the old chevy avalanche you could fold down the rear seats

That were even like remove the rear glass too to give yourself a much bigger bed because when you have just a little over four feet to deal with you got to think outside the box and then the last drawback would be the visibility i mean out front it’s actually really good like the windshield is very close to you and the front windows are low but the beltline kind of

Shoots up and the rear window is small so i would consider blind spot monitoring a rear cost traffic alert very important and that’s why i’m glad it’s standard now overall i can’t see any mid-sized truck buyer really even considering a hyundai santa cruz but it’s a great alternative to the suv driver who’s a little truck curious or someone interested in a competent

All-weather all-road vehicle with some flare and the ability to keep dirty smelly cargo in a bed thanks for watching if you enjoyed the video please leave a like to help me disrupt the youtube algorithm if you want more subscribe and hit the bell for notifications thank you to my loyal patrons i’ll catch you in the next one

Transcribed from video
5 Reasons to Buy a 2023 Hyundai Santa Cruz (What’s New?) By Realistick