Hyundai started 2026 in the US like a band on a world tour. Three consecutive monthly sales records through February, deliveries up four percent year-over-year, 121,301 units delivered in just the first two months. Impressive numbers, the kind that make press releases practically write themselves. Then March happened.
The Palisade, one of Hyundai’s best-selling SUVs stateside, got pulled from sale following a fatal incident linked to the power seats in the second and third rows. The Ioniq 6 sedan quietly disappeared from the lineup. Only the high-performance Ioniq 6 N will survive, offered later this year in limited quantities.
And then there’s the Santa Cruz. The little unibody pickup that couldn’t. After just four years on the market Hyundai’s compact pickup is heading for the exit. Production is expected to wrap up before the end of Q2 2027, ahead of schedule, which is a polite way of saying the market rendered its verdict and the verdict wasn’t kind. Last year, Santa Cruz deliveries totaled just 25,499 units, a 29% collapse compared to the year before. Meanwhile, the Maverick moved over 155,000 units in the same period.
Hyundai isn’t walking away from trucks entirely, though. The plan is to replace the Santa Cruz with something far more ambitious: a traditional body-on-frame midsize pickup, the kind of truck that will have to go toe-to-toe with the Toyota Tacoma, the Chevy Colorado, and the Ford Ranger. Production isn’t expected to start before 2029, with first deliveries penciled in for 2030. Plenty of time to build hype.
The CGI community has already moved in. The YouTube channel AutoYa has rendered an unofficial second-generation Santa Cruz for 2027, styled after the upcoming Hyundai Tucson, looking sharp and completely unbothered by the news of its own discontinuation.
For now, the Maverick rides alone at the top of the unibody pickup niche, unchallenged and apparently unchallengeable. Some thrones are just harder to take than they look.
