2024 Hyundai Santa Cruz

For 2024, Hyundai’s Santa Cruz pickup will join its SUV brethren — the Palisade, Santa Fe, and Tucson — in offering an XRT trim level with rugged styling upgrades meant to evoke off-road readiness. The XRT will exist alongside the Night trim (slightly above it, in terms of price), which was added to the lineup last year, and replaces the SEL Premium variant.

Blacked Out
Like the Night, the XRT is a blackout package, with dark front and rear bumpers, black door handles and mirrors, a dark chrome grille and tailgate handle, and matte-black lettering on the tailgate. It also gets side steps, bed rails, unique fender flares and lower-door trim, as well as red-orange wheel center caps. Inside, the XRT has black synthetic leather seats, as well as a leather-wrapped steering wheel and shift knob. Adaptive cruise control and the ability to use a smartphone as a key are standard.

Additionally, the full Santa Cruz lineup sees more standard equipment for 2024: LED projector headlights and a steering wheel that vibrates for blind spot warning and lane departure steering assist functions. SEL and higher trims now get dual-zone climate control, and navigation with a 10.25-inch touchscreen is now standard on the SEL with Activity Package, Night, XRT and Limited. Finally, the Night trim, like the XRT, gets black synthetic leather seats.

Performance
The SE and SEL are powered by a 191-horsepower, 2.5-liter four-cylinder engine that’s paired with an eight-speed automatic transmission. Front-wheel drive is standard, and all-wheel drive is available. The Night, XRT and Limited come with a turbocharged version of the same engine that makes 281 hp and are available exclusively with AWD; they have an eight-speed dual-clutch automatic.

FWD variants have an EPA-rated 22/26/23 mpg city/highway/combined, while AWD versions with the base engine see city and highway figures drop 1 mpg. Turbocharged models get 19/27/22 mpg.