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Hyundai Santa Cruz pickup with four doors, five seats, due around 2020

You could boil three years of coverage on the Hyundai Santa Cruz pickup to a question mark. The "crossover truck" debuted at the 2015 Detroit Auto Show, then got swallowed in the executive turmoil at Hyundai Motor America. Reuters reported last year that the Santa Cruz would finally arrive by 2020 as part of the South Korean carmaker's push into SUVs. Motor Trend recently spoke to Brian Smith, the COO at HMA, and got a crucial detail on the eventual truck. Forget about the sleek, two-door concept from Detroit — the actual item will be a "four-door ... that seats five." The redesigned Hyundai Tucson is also due in 2020, the compact crossover providing the platform for the Santa Cruz. If connecting the dots is really this simple, it mean's we'll be getting Hyundai's version of the Honda Ridgeline, the only unibody compact pickup on sale in the U.S. at the moment. And that makes us wonder how the Santa Cruz will fare whenever it gets here. Anyone who wanted to put money down on something similar to the highly popular concept has been booted from the game. They've been replaced by those who can be lured by an alternative to the Ridgeline, but the questions are how many buyers is that, and will the production Santa Cruz be the right truck to close the deal? In 2016, then-CEO Dave Zuchowski said Hyundai research showed the possibility of moving at least 50,000 pickups a year, and other studies suggested 70,000 sales could be possible. Even at the low end, that suggests a remarkable pent-up demand for the kind of truck that's never succeeded in the U.S. The Ridgeline sold 34,749 units in 2017, and numbers are down nearly 30 percent down so far this year. Meanwhile, the body-on-frame (BOF) GMC Canyon sold 32,106 units last year, and it was merely piggybacking on the Chevrolet Colorado, which did 112,996 sales. Even the BOF Nissan Frontier, last refreshed during the Bronze Age, sold 74,360 models. What's more, by the time the Santa Cruz gets here, the new BOF Ford Ranger will revel in actual pent-up demand, and the really cool kids will still be cooing over their new BOF Jeep Wrangler pickup. Looking back at the Ridgeline space, we await word from Volkswagen on the fate of the Tanoak concept. Hyundai could choose to take a stand in the unibody pickup segment on price; the Ridgeline whips up its own headwinds by charging $8,000 more than a Canyon, $11,000 more than a Frontier. Still, a Tucson with a bed, that is two years away ...

Hyundai recalls 883k Sonatas over detaching shift cable

There are plenty of things that can go wrong in a car, some more vital than others. Automakers try their best to make sure they don't, but things slip through, like the shift cables on the Hyundai Sonata.
Hyundai and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration have found that, on 883,000 units of the MY2011-2014 Sonata manufactured between December 11, 2009, and May 29, 2014, the shift cable in the transmission is prone to detach from the shift lever. As a result, the gear indicated and the gear engaged might not match, which could set the vehicle in motion unexpectedly. Worse than that, the Park position might not engage altogether, and without the hand brake pulled, that could lead the car to roll away without warning.
In an entirely separate recall affecting a much smaller number of 2015 Sonatas, Hyundai has found that the front brake calipers could fracture. This second recall affects a relatively small 5,650 units manufactured between April 25 and June 16, 2014.

Hyundai sales tank due to weak sales in China, Russia

Hyundai Motor's global volume dipped 13 percent in January to 338,035 deliveries. The drop is the automaker's first worldwide decline since July 2015, according to Bloomberg. The current slump of the once-booming Chinese market is especially hurting Hyundai's global volume, and a downturn in Russia also isn't helping the company's situation. Sales are down 1.1 percent in South Korea and 14 percent outside of the automaker's home market, according to Bloomberg. Hyundai expects the difficult situation to last much of the year. While Hyundai had a hard month internationally, the automaker's US division just reported its best January volume ever. The company delivered 45,011 vehicles, which was up one percent over 2015. The strong performance came in part from a 72-percent jump in Tucson volume and a 55-percent improvement for the Veloster. The company forecasts a strong year here in the States thanks to the introduction of the 2017 Elantra and an upcoming refresh for the Santa Fe. Hyundai already has a plan to build strength in the US and rebound elsewhere. For example, the company wants to capitalize on American's hunger for utility vehicles by adding capacity to build more of the Santa Fe Sport. It also intends to launch a B-segment CUV to challenge models like the Jeep Renegade, and the Genesis luxury sub-brand would eventually get an SUV, too. A cost-cutting strategy should help offset the downturn outside of this market. Related Video: