Our Hyundai Truck Is Named For a Place With Nice Weather—This Ain't That

Winter is finally winding down in the Midwest. Sure, there will be some last frozen gasps and (hopefully not any) surprise snowfalls, but we've put our 2022 Hyundai Santa Cruz through enough extreme winter conditions to render a verdict on its capability.

The true test came over the holidays. My family and I loaded the truck with all the presents and trappings for a Christmas vacation on an island in northern Ontario, and pulled the trip ahead by a day on warnings of a severe winter storm throughout Michigan and parts of Canada. Talk about your white Christmas.

We wanted to get as much of the 400-mile trip behind us as possible—I could continue MT's winter weather testing after safely reaching our destination.

Rather than risk it with the Santa Cruz's stock Kumho Crugen HP71 all-seasons, we fit our little truck with Michelin X-ICE Snow SUV 245/60R18 winter tires for the season, which we got from Tire Rack for $887.96.  Belle Tire put them on for $140.

The Santa Cruz also has a Snow mode, so I was counting on the extra capability engineered into the vehicle if things got a bit dicey. Turns out, they would.

We arrived ahead of the storm and then the snow started to fall. Big, fat flakes blanketed everything. When snow started piling up past the 18-inch mark, I got a call from Jake, the man who normally plows our driveway. It was snowing and blowing harder at his end of the island, roads were impassable, and he could not get to us. With my daughter scheduled to arrive overnight, I hopped in the Santa Cruz to create tracks for her Hyundai Tucson—the SUV upon which the Santa Cruz is based—to use when she arrived.

The snow was deep but extremely dry, light, and fluffy. I backed out of the garage and turned to face the slight incline of the long driveway. There was not enough traction initially to move forward but the tried-and-true practice of repeatedly shifting forward and reverse created enough runway to work with. Sure enough, the truck started crawling forward, inch by inch, gaining traction and speed in Snow mode. I made it to the top of the driveway in a single try, stopping short of the road to see how much of a snowbank had been left by the plow. It looked passable so I backed up and then took a run at it, using ramming speed to burst through and onto the rural road. Multiple runs up and down the driveway created a cat track and it worked: Our daughter arrived safely at 4:30 a.m. after a 12-hour drive through freezing rain and increasingly blowing snow.

The snow kept coming, dumping another foot of the white stuff. Initial plans for more family members to join us for Christmas dinner were canceled. Main roads were being closed. The tracks in the driveway had long since been erased. Foolish notions we could replicate them were quickly quashed; I pulled the truck out of the garage again, but this time the wheels just spun. To be fair, the snow was higher than the bumper, turning the Santa Cruz into an unwitting snowplow with no blade. Out came the shovels and bodies needed to push it back to the refuge of the garage. We later learned the area's graders had gone off the road into ditches and needed to be towed—nobody was going anywhere for a few days. Light a fire, sip some eggnog, enjoy the company you were snowed in with.

A few days later Jake arrived with his tractor and industrial-grade snowblower, and we were freed to resume travel.

On packed-snow roads, the Hyundai's winter tires continued to work perfectly. When milder temperatures made the snow sloppy and slippery and a visiting all-wheel drive Toyota Highlander on all-season tires was getting stuck in the driveway, the Santa Cruz navigated the incline easily.

Returning to dry pavement a week later, the Michelins have not proven to be excessively noisy or uncomfortable.

Climate-wise, the Santa Cruz is well equipped for the cold. Heated side mirrors, which come on automatically when the rear defrost is on, worked so flawlessly I did not realize it was a feature. The front seats heat quickly; it is not long before you need to turn them down from the highest of the three settings.

Overall cabin heating is also fast. The diffuse airflow seems to work really well once a comfortable temperature has been achieved, with no eye-drying or cold spots up front, but second-row citizens don't have air vents in the SEL trim. Rear seat passengers complained the cabin got too hot, but to be fair, we did squish three adults back there who were not overly comfortable irrespective of temperature.

The windshield defroster clears ice quickly, and there is also a rear defroster but that window is protected enough against the bed that it does not seem to frost up, even on the coldest days. Colleague Frank Markus had the Santa Cruz in Memphis during an ice storm in February. He had the foresight to use a Frost Guard windshield cover which proved indispensable. "Heaven knows how long it would have taken to scrape an inch of hard ice off it, but it lifted right off, leaving even the wipers clear," he says. One quibble: you cannot lift the wipers off the glass when the vehicle is stopped and they are in their resting position at the bottom of the windshield. The lip of the hood boxes them into place. People who live in cold climates like being able to lift the wipers off the glass ahead of a storm or cold snap to keep them from freezing in place.

I wish our SEL with AWD and the Premium package had a heated steering wheel but that comes with the top Limited trim, along with ventilated front seats, rear air conditioning vents, and adaptive cruise control which I sorely miss on long trips.

Overall, the Santa Cruz proved itself to be a worthy winter warrior, battle-tested during some extreme weather conditions.

We have an update on that transmission recall that came with the scary warning that if the instrument panel started lighting up like a Christmas tree, the driver has 20-30 seconds to pull over before suffering a complete loss of drive power. We took it in for the recall and the dealer found no trouble code present, so the good news is we were never in danger. And the control unit that received the appropriate upgrade was tested and passed with flying colors.

When the software update was first offered, some customers reported it made the transmission worse: shifts were rough, and the vehicle shuddered when it stopped. Hyundai did a second software update and remedied it. Our tardiness in getting it to the dealer meant we got the second update and have had no problems.

There was no charge for the recall, and we used the dealership visit to perform the first oil change that is normally packaged with a tire rotation that was not necessary, having just put on the winter tires. Normally the vehicle would come with free maintenance but because of the unusual MotorTrend purchase agreement to evaluate the pickup for a year, there is no owner's name attached to the vehicle and the charge was $90.05.