Hyundai’s looking to make news on Wednesday at the 2026 New York auto show and the automaker’s being mum on details and light on hints. What if Hyundai’s preparing to drop a crater (or … asteroid) on the Raptor and TRX. Get it?
On Monday, Hyundai released a teaser video embedded below that is a simple clip showing a big rock floating above a human on what appears to be a mountain amongst the clouds. What’s it mean? Simply put, the body-on-frame Hyundai might break cover. Alternatively, what could be likely but make less logical sense is a production variant of the Crater concept, which was electric.
🚨 No jokes here, only big things in store on 4/1 📷Tune in Weds, 4/1 at 9:55 a.m. ET to the @NYAutoShow to see what we’ve been up to 📷 https://t.co/NKpjlCxSRG pic.twitter.com/UkqbfllcOA
— Hyundai USA (@Hyundai) March 30, 2026
Hyundai’s already said a body-on-frame truck will be coming to the U.S. by 2030, and an SUV is likely going to be paired with this upcoming model.
The automaker’s making moves to set up the showroom field by killing the unibody-based Santa Cruz pickup back in January.
What might this thing look like? The Hyundai Crater concept that debuted in November at the 2025 LA auto show gave insight to where Hyundai’s design team’s heads are at. Punched-out metal, raked roofline giving a sense of motion while sitting still, huge tires, big tow hooks, trail sights, and lots of ground clearance is all part of the recipe.
Hyundai also intends to be taken seriously in the context of off-road capability. In November at the LA auto show Olabisi Boyle, who is the senior vice president of product planning and mobility strategy at Hyundai North America, told The Drive that the automaker’s XRT trim “is not gonna be a trim,” and the products coming are going to be “100%” more capable than what’s on showroom floors right now. Hyundai’s hungry for a slice of the adventure and off-road market segment.” Sadi Boyle, who went on to say, “We’re bringing that true (off-road) capability and hardware to our vehicles going forward.”
No product today exists to fill those claims. “You can do more with a body on frame platform than you can do with unibody or monocoque. sometimes they call it in our company. And that is allowing us a lot of opportunities. That’s the enabler,” Boyle told The Drive in November.
Less likely, but somewhat possible, is a production variant of the aforementioned Crater concept. The concept was based on today’s E-GMP platform, which underpins everything from the Ioniq 5 to the Ioniq 6 (which is now dead in the U.S. outside of the N model, RIP), and the three-row Ioniq 9 crossover. Hyundai could very well make a production variant, but with how things are going with EVs in the U.S. market it seems less likely than a body-on-frame vehicle that we already know is coming.
And what if that body-on-frame SUV or truck is called … the Crater. Get it? Like an asteroid that came for the dinosaurs.