"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhi and welcome to talking cars i'm jennifer stockberger i'm john lidcove and i'm alex isaac so we're going to start today with our final test results of the somewhat quirky hyundai santa cruz pickup truck so i have to tell you we took this truck to a college visit for my young son and people were literally clamoring around it because it is kind of i use quirky but i use it in a positive way very different looking very new i have a little sentimental because i had a boyfriend who had a subaru brat back in the day but just kind of that next one in the small pickup segment so i think there's really on this truck two questions how does it perform as a vehicle and then ultimately how does it perform as a little truck so i'm going to start with you alex on the first question how is it as a vehicle it's it's pretty nice um i walked away pretty happy with how it drove how comfortable it was um you know it didn't quite dethrone the honda ridgeline as our top uh small truck and and keep in mind this is quite a bit smaller than the ridgeline i think it's almost two feet shorter than the ridgeline in terms of length but it did well i um really like the way it drives and i'll start there it just the powertrain is strong the handling is quite good i enjoyed piloting this thing around and it's comfortable doesn't really have that truckish ride that you might think of when you think of like a small pickup truck um not so much the ridgeline but something like a tacoma or a ford ranger for example right so those trucks when they're unloaded in the bed either bouncing around in the back the ride's pretty rough they're a little difficult to drive and you just don't have any of that here so this is based on the actually it's a really interesting vehicle it's kind of a mashup of different hyundai products so the front doors the hood and the the front fascia are pretty much all tucson and so was the the dashboard and the controls those are and that's a good thing actually that that vehicle did well there in terms of controls and interior comfort so everything from the b pillar back is unique to the santa cruz it's a bit smaller than the tucson so the santa cruz is suffering a little bit in that regard it's a little less comfortable back there visibility is tight and then of course the truck bed is completely unique to the santa cruz and then it borrows some other components from the larger santa fe so the rear suspension is more robust than the two sides borrowed from the santa fe so it's heavier duty gets you some of that towing and load capacity and then it also borrows the the powertrain that 2.5 turbocharged engine which you can't get in the tucson it's actually quite a bit of power for a vehicle the size and it gets it going pretty good um the dual clutch transmission has some oddities but you know once you get up and going it it's pretty nice yeah and i think it's worth noting that the base engine is 191 horsepower 2.5 liter for no turbo so may not be as pleasing as the turbo we had in yeah yeah regards right and it wasn't in the tucson we've tested that base engine in the tucson and in that smaller vehicle we found it kind of a little lazy and underpowered so i would suspect that you're definitely right about that right so and and the obvious other question is okay yeah as a vehicle pretty good and and the mash-up really does have some advantages john i know you had occasion to use it somewhat as a truck how does it perform as a pickup truck yeah it's funny it's i'll consider it a trucklit yeah you said brat super brad i'll say subaru baja you know the same same thing a lot of people i cycle with were really interested in it because of the the trunk they also has a trunk inside of the pickup bed a sealed uh trunk sort of like a honda originally it has a hard tonneau cover that you could get that that accordions so it you know it folds back so it's not just like something that you snap but you actually pull it it's hard um you know it can latch in a couple different spots but it's a really short bed um so you can't fit a bicycle in there and pull the tonneau at all right um and you may not even be able to fit a bicycle in there with the wheel turn and put the gate up so you cut i think you really need a two inch hitch on the back uh so you can have an external bike rack but if you do that or or you could go the way that people are going now with pickup trucks where you get a a pad over the tailgate you hang the bike with the wheel over there you know i'm not a big fan of doing that with my bikes but you know your mileage may vary um you you get a hitch though it's it really does serve a lot of purpose for people who are particularly getting going in the woods you know have a mountain bike or something like that or you know going hiking or whatever where you can throw all your dirty stuff now in this bed that is sealable you're not worried about it uh flying out or something like that or being exposed if you go and get something to eat afterwards and you're not putting dirty stuff inside the vehicle itself so you can carry four people and bikes and they're they're junk let's just use that word and it you know it's it's it's a lot nicer because it's not exposed to the elements or or to you know someone passing by who wants to grab it so um oh and that way it's great and and i was able to put my road bike in the back because like a lot of pickup trucks you could flip the seats up the seat base is up and they stay up which is very nice um not all not all new chocolate carves trucks do that um and and i could fit it in there so i you know it was easy and i didn't have to worry about having it bounce around the bed so in that respect it is a nice useful truck yeah and that the larger power train also gives it 5 000 pounds of towing capacity so not something we typically see in a vehicle of that size but again that mash-up that alex is talking about gives it that that advantage of towing i agree with you and and i i think i've told you guys i've changed my if i were retiring today car from the kia sorrento to the honda ridgeline for my gentlewoman farmer lifestyle this was for that type of lifestyle i think it's it's very good but for me it was still a little small both in the cabin space as alex alluded to that rear seat again i got big kids now a lot little kids and that bed um certainly for a gardener or somebody like that has all the advantages of a small suv like the tucson access all of that simple controls that hyundai's done a great job with good fuel economy over some of the slightly larger trucks um so it's a balance it's certainly a vehicle if you're thinking gardening and small dirty things john or hiking and that type of thing fisherman i think of you know rods and reels and fish it would be a great vehicle i truly agree um it's super quiet i mean yes the the unibody the the the la you know the car based vehicle keeps the vehicle it keeps it super super quiet yeah um which is and then with this you know you're not revving this kind of underpowered engine either to get you know keep 70 80 miles an hour with traffic on the highway you know so you don't have that that droning noise either i was to say it's pretty easy to forget that you're actually driving what you might think of as a pickup truck while you're sitting behind the wheel it feels like driving a tucson for the most part i mean it's a little longer so it maybe doesn't turn in so quickly or something like that but who cares it is comfortable it rides well uh yeah you almost forget that you're pulling that bed behind you and like you said jen uh my kids are 12 and 10 almost they fit in the back seat well but much like the ridgeline honda ridgeline based on the pilot has a slightly smaller back seat you know this one drops down another class as well so at least the ridgeline has an adult back seat right this one is it is definitely a penalty box in for adults for my 17 year old boy challenge it's definitely a pen and i do want to add on this chocolate which i love that word john forward collision warning automatic emergency braking with pedestrian and cyclist detection john lane departure warning lane keeping assist all standard blind spot warning as we often see optional rear cross traffic warning optional because it is not on the base se not even offered on the base sc so lots of safety i do think you know and its overall score may not quite convey because it's being compared against some of those slightly larger pickup trucks again better interiors but if it if it sounds like it might be right for your lifestyle or that you're only using the bed occasionally for you know a run to the dump or some gardening or it's definitely worth a look at and it's um yeah very interesting yeah i would like to add one one anecdote i took this truck to um my parents house couple hours away for a weekend and if you're thinking about this coming from an suv where you can put all of your luggage and like soft bags and things like that in the trunk and then still have people inside for the seats you know sitting in these seats you might not be able to do that here because it was a snowy rainy weekend so we couldn't put anything in the bed because it's going to get soaking wet so now that's all in the back seat and i know this sounds kind of obvious but until it happens you don't really you might not think about it right uh now all of our luggage is in the passenger compartment and if we had more than just my wife and i no other passengers so there's some of that flexibility that you might have with an suv that you kind of lose here it does have that tonneau cover but you can't really rely on it to be completely waterproof right yeah not not weather tight right definitely it's great for dirty stuff um totally and it's a you know it's not an easy vehicle to justify if it's just dump runs i mean you know a beetle pickup truck is is best for dump runs uh only but right but as a as a travel as a useful vehicle as a you know less jouncy for a technical term uh pickup as i know every people will be going it's not a truck it's not a truck it's not a truck you know and it's not but it also doesn't have all the drawbacks of the truck either right so yeah so so certainly um we have all of the final test results of the hyundai santa cruz at consumerreports.org if you want to dig into those details depending on how you might want to use it certainly a fun style truck we're not rating style but but definitely draws some reaction um moving on to our question of the week as always your 30 second video clips your questions keep them coming talking cars at icloud.com love the interaction and this one comes from alex another alex from canada take a listen i saw some reliability scores in the latest consumer reports magazine that i thought were strange for example the chevy trailblazer with a score of 100 and the toyota rav4 with a score of 44. i thought that was strange considering toyotas are generally known to be long lasting cars and chevy's maybe to break down early so i'm wondering does your reliability score take into account only the reliability in the first 12 months or does it look into the long-term reliability which car is more likely to do better in the long term and give long-term reliability which one's more likely to last after 200 000 kilometers in 10 years the chevy with the good reliability score or the toyota with the bad reliability score thanks so alex has actually a lot of questions within his question so i think the first one is about our reliability ratings in general and alex maybe you can help alex on that question alex i'm happy to help so it's a complicated topic uh reliability i mean there are so many things that can affect the reliability of a car um but as far as our ratings you know you asked about whether it takes into 12 months or um you know the life of the vehicle and we do reliability ratings on a yearly basis when we're calculating predicted reliability of future models or you know upcoming year for an existing model it takes into three years of data if it can takes into account three years of data of course that's not always available so we might have to do our best to make the prediction but um yeah so it is on a yearly basis and i know john's gonna maybe go into more detail on the specific model but just you know the uh models that you threw out there the trailblazer and the rav4 um just one i mean one thing can really go wrong with a model and there could be so many reasons that that happens whether it's a supplier change or just an inherent defect in the way a part was designed from the get-go that doesn't get resolved um in the case of the rav4 you know it's a fuel pump and fuel tank issue and basically every rav4 has a fuel pump in a fuel tank so it proliferates throughout the whole lineup and it can really degrade and it's a critical function right so it degrades the reliability of the model as a whole and to alex's point in a traditionally very reliable model it just so happens so it just goes to show you a very very super reliable brand or model can't have a an off year or a component problem and every other thing in that car could be perfect perfect as far as reliability goes but if you can't drive it because the fuel pump's failed and it's constantly going to the shop for that one issue there you go yeah and john in his question going back to what you were saying that very direct comparison the trailblazer versus the rav4 and you had some thoughts about why the trailblazer in this case may be so good yeah um so a number that you know alex touched on it where we try to look at three years and one of the things that we do is particularly if three years of data data are not available we look at other vehicles with from the manufacturer that use the same components or use the same platform so the shared shared components you know particularly between drivetrain and such but the the trailblazer um introduced for 21 uh is based on basically it's a buick encore gx it's it's you know there's different trim there's different look and spiel but the guts of it is a buick encore gx which was introduced for the 20 model year and like alex said also our reliability survey is yearly so we don't say oh well everyone in the 21 survey said this about the trailblazer there's the score now we go out and say okay now it's 2021 for the for the you know end of year survey tell us about your experience with your 2020 encore gx which you told us about in 2020 as well in that survey so the first model year and one additional point is first model years of vehicles no matter the manufacturer tend to have a lower reliability score rating than the final model year of the previous generation the final model year the v they got everything worked out you know it it it may be old and long of the tooth as far as some technology and features but it's it's you know by that point if they didn't get it right that's a that's a star cross model so what you see with in relation with the uh encore encore gx it was debut debuted as a 20 it still has average reliability because there are still parts the brakes and noises and leaks and in-car electronics for the specific categories that have have you know they're they aren't above average or well above average they're either average or below average scores um that that people tell us about so that still that model still in its second year out there is still having problems um the 2021 model actually is well above average which is the same as a trailblazer so what we're looking at with the trailblazer is we look at the scores that we got from people um for the 2021 model but we also look at what the buick encore gx has for the 2021 model just just for additional data on that and it's just above board it has well above average reliability so very low problem rate percentage compared to the average model for every category which is which is how it got its score the toyota rav4 people from that first first model year are still having problems with it today in the survey and that is going to affect it because if people are having issues with with the vehicle that toyota has not been able to address it does weight the score down for the current model um and the prediction for for that for that 2022. right the subsequent years if they can't work it out i think you know i always say when we talk about health you know i say you know it's it's one thing to avoid getting sick but the other thing i say of people's general general health is when you get sick how quickly do you um feel better how quickly do you jump back that's the same with the cars it's not that they're never going to have a problem but how quickly can manufacturers address them and change them so that that subsequent model year is now looking better sounds like buick having a little trouble there whereas um toyota maybe in a couple years maybe 23s show that they're better on that rav4 but again i just caution you know research is key you know not just on a traditionally um uh stellar reliable brand but what's it share what's it share you know what does the trailblazer share with that encore did they work out the kinks in the encore first and john t often that luxury more loaded brand like the buick versus the chevy may have more things to go wrong we've seen that as well in terms of electronics and things like that as well you definitely see that we saw that a lot in our in our survey this year and if you go to consumerreports.org you'll see our report where we talked about it with evs in particular a lot of the upper echelon if you want to say the luxury like evs you know the the electric vehicle componentry isn't necessarily the problem it's all the extra ancillary stuff you know that that's cause issues and you know so what you're talking about a great example that that kind of backs up the chevrolet buick issue or what we saw with chevrolet and buick is kia and hyundai hyundai tends to launch a vehicle first so the hyundai sonata is the first model uh the kia k5 comes out a year later or or at the time the kia optima for example the previous gen the hyundai launches they have first year woes second year the kia comes out the hyundai's on its second model year that one actually has had the address the issues addressed and the kia launches very well because they already took the learnings from that first year and they applied it to the to the production line um so avoiding first years but if you see twin models if you really need a new one buy the first year of the twin not the first year of the of the you know before the uh the child gets uh gets a brother or sister so to speak that's right again new parents have learning quote first year woes too so great question alex hopefully we unpacked what you had in there and and have a better understanding not just of liability but those two cars in general so as always we thank you for watching thank you for listening keep the questions coming talking cars at icloud.com and we will see you next week\n"