SantaCruz
Ken Gratton21 Sept 2017
NEWS

Hyundai's HiLux rival in the works

Forget Santa Cruz, there's a serious pick-up in the early stages of development at Hyundai

Hyundai Australia has given up any thought of bringing the dual-cab Santa Cruz 'lifestyle' ute to Australia, not that the concept that debuted in Detroit nearly three years ago was a realistic option anyway.

A light-duty design aimed at taking sales off the North America-only Honda Ridgeline, the Santa Cruz was unlikely to compete in Australia on an equal footing with vehicles such as Toyota's HiLux or the Ford Ranger.

So is there a better alternative in the pipeline?

Yes, says Hyundai Australia COO, Scott Grant.

"We've been talking about it for a number of years now," Grant told Australian journalists attending the global launch of the Genesis G70 last week.

"HMC [Hyundai Motor Corporation, the head office in Seoul] has been listening, typically, but not necessarily taking a lot of action – due to priorities in other markets, and other developments, and so forth.

"About 12 months, 18 months ago, [we began a] study about developing a light commercial vehicle for our part of the market, as well as for what North America likes. You've seen the developments in North America [Santa Cruz ute concept]; that is not applicable to our market. Our market program is still in development – and we're confident of having something on the other side of 2020.

"But there's no official launch plan at this moment. It is a far more vigorous study program in HMC than previously; they were more listening but not acting. Now they're acting…"

So Hyundai acknowledges the problem, but with all the other items for consideration on its agenda, 'the other side of 2020' could be 2025 or later before we see anything substantive.

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Written byKen Gratton
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