Our Hyundai Santa Cruz has ferried some impressive items in its small pickup bed.
The 2022 Hyundai Santa Cruz is a cute little pickup with a stubby little bed. Over our nine months with our test truck, we've tested its hauling capabilities extensively—Tetrising everything from couches to trees into the Hyundai compact pickup truck.
A quick recap before we dive in to all the things we've fit into our Santa Cruz: the pickup's bed is 42.5 inches across at its narrowest point between the wheel wells and 49.75 inches at its widest point. We ordered our Hyundai with the retractable tonneau cover and while we love the protection it provides, it does come with some space compromises. It consumes about 10 inches of the front top of the bed, and the bed height of 17 inches is reduced to 11.25 inches below the tonneau stowage roll. By comparison, the Ford Maverick, with a conventional removable tonneau cover, offers up 18.9 inches of height in a bed of the same width as the Hyundai's.
The Santa Cruz has a 4.0-foot-long composite molded bed while the Maverick's steel bed is 4.5 feet long. The Hyundai Santa Cruz makes up some ground with its hidden trunk in the back of the bed, a feature the Ford lacks.
Before we show you some epic carries and a few fails, a couple updates. After complaining that the lip of the hood prevents you from lifting the wipers off the windshield to keep them from freezing in place, we have since learned the trick is to turn off the vehicle and then lift and hold the wiper-control stalk up to the "mist" position for about two seconds until the wipers move to the top wipe position.
And now, some Santa Cruz carries:
One of the beauties of rural living is an abundance of trees, many of them under power lines that the utility companies must cut and trim to protect said lines. So, if you find a good Christmas tree candidate growing on the road abatement, chop it down yourself knowing you are helping the utility company out at the same time.
Finding a well-shaped tree is tricky. The one we found was roughly 10-feet long, but we stuffed it into the Santa Cruz's 4-foot bed for the short trip back home where the decorating crew was waiting.
The true test of any pickup is its ability to move a couch. This regular-sized, three-person couch was carefully wrapped in a tarp for the hour-long trip to its new home.
Honestly, getting the couch into the truck and wrapping it up was the hard part. Once in and secured, it may have looked odd or even a bit dicey, but it did not move an inch during the entire transport.
The bed wasn't deep enough for the tonneau cover to close over a Honda generator so colleague Frank Markus secured the cover in a partially open position by tying the cover strap to the generator handle.
Frank noted it would be nice if the tonneau could lock into position anywhere between fully open and fully closed to accommodate big items while still allowing some protection of other gear. It does help that you can lock it in the halfway-open position.
It looked like this wooden cabinet would fit, shortened to 39-inches long with the wheels removed. But the locking mechanism on the tonneau cover and other hardware hung down just enough that the cabinet was too high.
This cabinet would have fit in the Ford Maverick, which has a deeper bed than the Santa Cruz.
Overall, the bed does take in a lot of normal sized gear: plastic bins, suitcases, groceries. We have rarely had to leave anything behind, even when loaded up with presents.
Tetris skills not required for a normal load of food and clothes and seasonal tools that need to be taken north for the summer.