2022 Hyundai Santa Cruz: A truck by any other name

The Venn diagram of why pickup trucks - particularly fullsizers - succeed in the American consumer psyche surely is complex and bizarre. But pickups are here to stay and now automakers have set to work filling every size segment with this beloved body style.

For decades, the notion of compact pickups has been ignored, largely because most companies' manufacturing capacity has been directed to full-size body-on-frame behemoths and their correspondingly outsized profits. When the market got too overheated for only full-sizers to handle, midsize models a few years ago got renewed attention. But even today's midsize pickups are large-ish and not inexpensive, leading product-development to the inevitable: compact pickups. Considering the dimensional bloat of all segments over the past two decades, “smaller-than-mid-size” might be a more appropriate description.