Hyundai Preparing New 1-Tonne Pickup Truck With A Proper Ladder Frame Chassis

A Hyundai official has confirmed that the company is planning to introduce a new one-tone pickup truck with a traditional ladder-frame chassis. This new model should not be confused with the pictured unibody Santa Cruz.

Hyundai Australia chief executive John Kett confirmed the news during a recent interview with Which Car.  “What’s clear to us is that if we’re going to bring a ute out, it had better be a ute,” he said. “We’ve got past the first hurdle of what it needs to look like, but it needs to be functional as well. That’s the important part. We’re going down that pathway and we’re working towards it. We just have to make sure that when it arrives, it’s a bloody ute.”

Also Read: Long-Awaited Hyundai Pickup Truck Is Coming “Soon” As US-Built Model

To establish the new pickup as a direct rival to established market leaders such as the Toyota HiLux and Ford Ranger, Hyundai says it must sell its pickup in a variety of different forms catering towards different customers.

“We’re looking at a range. When you cut up the ute market, you split it up between 4×4 and 4×2, who owns 4×2 and what powertrain goes with that [internally] and then 4×4 crew cab versus cab/chassis and so on… we want to be smart about it and that’s what we’re going through at the moment,” Kett said. “Andrew [Tuatahi, Hyundai product manager] is having a lot of sleepless nights over this because we’re going fast down that road, but we do need to be smart about it, so that when people look at it, they say ‘yep, that’s it’.”

It’s not just Australia the Korean automaker is targeting with its first pickup. Hyundai USA vice president of product, corporate and digital planning, Michael O’Brien, recently confirmed that it will be also be sold Stateside and will likely be manufactured in North America.

Correction: As some of our readers pointed out, Hyundai Australia’s CEO was not referring to the upcoming Santa Cruz, as erroneously reported in the original article, but a new compact truck that the company is preparing

Note: Unrelated Hyundai Santa Cruz Concept truck pictured