Artist Reimagines Santa Cruz as Rugged Tucson-Based Pickup

Hyundai appears to be moving away from a second-generation unibody Santa Cruz and toward a proper mid-size body-on-frame pickup, a strategic shift underscored by recent CGI work that imagines the compact pickup reborn on the larger, boxier fifth-generation Tucson platform.

The renderings come from Brazil-based visual artist Kleber Silva, who posts as KDesign AG. Silva reengineered the new Tucson NX5, removing the third side window and D-pillar to create a single-cab silhouette that reads as a unibody compact pickup in his images. The project is unofficial and speculative, shared on Behance and social channels on 26 September 2026.

Hyundai’s broader product signals and U.S. sales context help explain the imaginative pivot.

Market context and Hyundai’s plans

Hyundai Motor America reported 86,977 total deliveries in August 2026, a two percent decline versus the same month last year, while the year-to-date tally sits just over 620,000 units, roughly two percent higher than a year earlier. The automaker also recorded a record month for hybrid models in August, with hybrid sales up 33 percent year-over-year. The Tucson and Santa Fe SUVs posted their best-ever August results, with Tucson sales up 18 percent and Santa Fe up 5 percent for the month.

At home in South Korea Hyundai recently revealed the all-new fifth-generation NX5 Tucson to a live audience, showing both the regular and the more rugged XRT variant. The company has also teased its 2026 Paris Motor Show roster, where the new Bayon and Tucson are expected to feature among the premieres.

Against that backdrop, the locally produced Santa Cruz compact unibody pickup has struggled in the U.S. The vehicle’s first eight months of 2026 deliveries fell to about 13,000 units, a 30 percent decline year-to-date, while the Tucson increased to nearly 159,000 units in the same period, up about 7 percent.

Industry reporting and commentary indicate Hyundai is not planning a like-for-like second-generation unibody Santa Cruz. Instead the company appears to be developing a conventional mid-size body-on-frame pickup, a segment that pits Hyundai against established rivals and, according to the reporting, aims more directly at the Toyota Tacoma than at compact unibody competitors such as the Ford Maverick.

The CGI concept

Silva’s CGI is framed by those market realities. Using the larger footprint and the boxier, more aggressive lines of the NX5 Tucson, he removed the rear quarter glass and D-pillar to create a continuous roofline and a pickup bed. In the artist’s view the modification yields extra cargo volume and a tougher, more traditional pickup aesthetic than the current Santa Cruz, which critics have described as derived too closely from the Tucson and therefore visually soft for the U.S. pickup market.

The render is explicit about its unofficial status; it is a design exercise rather than a manufacturer concept. Silva credits the fifth-generation Tucson as the starting point, and the images are presented as a hypothetical next-generation Santa Cruz in a unibody form factor derived from that SUV.

Hyundai has not confirmed styling or architecture details for any Santa Cruz successor, and any future production vehicle could differ substantially from fan renders. The automaker’s apparent shift toward a body-on-frame mid-size pickup, combined with the NX5 Tucson’s larger, more rugged design language, helps explain why digital designers and observers are exploring multiple possible directions for the Santa Cruz nameplate.