Virtual Suzuki Jimny Shows Maverick and Santa Cruz How to Do a Compact Truck Properly

After years of neglect, the US compact pickup truck segment was revived with the arrival of the Santa Cruz four-door compact pickup truck from Hyundai – it is based on the Tucson crossover SUV and uses a unibody chassis design with manufacturing duty assigned to HMMA in Montgomery, Alabama. Closely related to the NX4 fourth-generation Tucson, it's like a crossover SUV with an open bed.

However, it didn't come alone. Seizing the opportunity to capture the sales record of yet another truck segment, Ford also cooked up a rival – and its Maverick proved a tremendous success immediately. The reasons for its popularity are easy to explain: it's cheaper because it's made in Mexico, and it's also more rugged because its design is connected to the Ranger and F-150 trucks rather than the Bronco Sport and Escape crossover siblings.

Alas, none of them is all that 'compact' because the Hyundai Santa Cruz – which is about to get a refresh at the 2024 New York International Auto Show alongside its Tucson SUV sibling – stands at 4,970 mm (195.7 in) in length and the Ford Maverick is even bigger (5,072 mm or 199.7 inches). As such, maybe someone ought to show them what a compact pickup truck really is – even if only across the imaginative realm of digital car content creators.

More precisely, the virtual artist, better known as Theottle on social media, has recently resorted to CGI slicing and dicing the Suzuki Jimny into a 'tiny' pickup truck. However, since it features a much longer wheelbase than a standard fourth-generation Suzuki Jimny five-door SUV, the pixel master deployed some Jeep Gladiator DNA in the virtual transformation process – a perfect fit for the rugged and boxy design of the little Japanese SUV.

So, if Suzuki came back to America with something like this, would you choose it over the stylish Santa Cruz or the rugged Ford Maverick? Also, if Suzuki were to launch it internationally, would this Jimny pickup truck represent a feasible alternative to other models like the Chevrolet Montana or even a larger model such as the Ford Ranger?

Additionally, this CGI expert doesn't seem to think that anything is tabu when cooking up their next pickup truck design project – just recently, he also transformed China's YangWang U8 (BYD's full-size premium electric off-road SUV) because the author saw potential in turning it into a pickup truck rival for the Ford F-150 Lightning, Rivian R1T, or Tesla Cybertruck, for example.

That's not all because the unofficial automotive designer also thinks about models that everyone already knows and loves – not too long ago, he also imagined the next Nissan Navara iteration as a 'deep facelift' of the all-new Mitsubishi Triton (L200) with a front end inspired by the fresh Nissan Interstar.