Hyundai Santa Cruz

Pickup trucks have dominated the American market for the longest time, and this isn’t bound to change anytime soon. There are tens of pickup trucks available today, and unless you are clear with your requirements, you are sure to get confused with what to pick. With electric trucks entering the market, the confusion is only going to intensify. When we sat down to pick the best trucks of 2021, we knew we were in for a trouble given the numerous choices that we have. So, to make it simpler, we decided to go with new that were launched in 2021.

Presenting to you, the five best pickup trucks of 2021. Spoiler alert – two of these are EVs!

With the pandemic still looming over our heads, 2021 was a pretty action-packed year for the auto industry. Sure, you had challenges, with automakers having to contend with issues like chip shortages, causing delays to consumers. But regardless, the show had to go on and we got some pretty cool cars making their debut, predominantly towards the latter half of 2021.

Let’s get one thing out of the way, 2021 really was also the year, when the market as a whole began to embrace EV’s and you could see several automakers both the legacy as well as EV startups bring several new models to market. Having said that, we did see some pretty cool ICE cars, also make their debut. Now there were several cars that made headlines this year, it was very difficult to pick out the best ones, but the cars on this list definitely stood out. Here’s our list of some of the most highly anticipated and important cars that were unveiled in 2021.

The folks at ‘The Fast Lane Truck’ conducted a drag race with not two, but five different pickup trucks. They had trucks across segments, starting from the Ford Maverick and the Hyundai Santa Cruz, to the Nissan Frontier, the Toyota Tundra, and the Ford F-150 Raptor. This wasn’t a conventional race wherein you just had all five trucks go at it together. It was more of a gauntlet match wherein the winner of a race faced a new truck in the next round and the loser got eliminated. Sounds a little like Squid Game, doesn’t it?

There’s something to be said about a drag race between pickup trucks. Straight-line performance is not really the main selling point of these types of vehicles, but it still gives you an idea of how good the powertrains are at propelling them. Last time, Sam CarLegion had a RAM 1500 TRX vs Ford F150 ROUSH drag race, instore. This time, it’s the Honda Ridgeline vs the Hyundai Santa Cruz, and here’s what happened.

Hyundai has announced that the Santa Cruz pickup will go on sale at the end of July 2021. It will carry a price tag of $23,990 for the entry-level, FWD, SE model, while the range-topping limited trim with the 2.5-liter turbocharged engine and AWD will command a steep price of $39,720. In comparison, the new Ford Maverick starts out at just $19,995, and it’s coming from an automaker that knows a thing of two about trucks. It will even be offered with an FX4 package that will being with it more off-road capability, but with AWD vs. 4WD. The Santa Cruz will offer up to 275 horsepower, which isn’t bad for a smaller truck, which might be its strongest selling point as the range-topping Maverick will come with just 250 horsepower and 277 pound-feet of torque from a turbocharged, 2.0-liter EcoBoost four-cylinder. Click on the full-screen button on the slider above to read our dedicated webstory on the Hyundai Santa Cruz and what it brings to the table.

This is the all-new Hyundai Santa Cruz, a pickup we’ve been waiting for for six years now. So get ready, Ford Maverick, because the Koreans are out to get you and your fancy unibody construction.

Hyundai has been away from the pickup truck market and there is no logical reason for it. However, the company unveiled a pickup truck concept called Santa Cruz in 2015 and it finally looked like the automaker has realized what it’s losing out on. People would’ve expected Hyundai to launch a full-fledged, hardcore truck to leave a strong impression, but the Santa Cruz is a unibody pickup truck, which means that the automaker is offering a jack-of-all-master-of-none kind of a truck. However, a rendering artist named Enoch Gabriel Gonzales has envisioned a truck which he calls Tarlac, and it falls in line with the company’s design philosophy. Looks neat, huh?