Hyundai Santa Cruz

The Hyundai Santa Cruz ute has been photographed during cold weather testing in Sweden. This latest prototype is wearing the same amount of camouflage as the vehicle spotted back in December, but this time around we can see the car from a great number of angles and tease out a few extra details.

With head offices for Ford, GM and Fiat-Chrysler, Detroit is to America’s motor industry as Nashville is to country music. It's the homeroom of companies that once laid claim to being industry influencers, so it shouldn't be surprising to hear the Detroit motor show is a whopper.

The automotive news wheel is always turning. If you’re not constantly checking CarAdvice – which you should be doing, by the way – it can be easy for some headlines to slip through the cracks. To make sure you haven’t missed anything important, we’ve gathered what we reckon are the hottest news stories from this week, right here. Check them out, and let us know what caught your eye.

How well can the Hyundai Santa Cruz lifestyle ute sell? As well as two of the biggest-selling SUVs on the planet, according to the brand. Hyundai Motor America vice president of corporate and product planning, Mike O’Brien, told CarAdvice at the 2016 Detroit auto show that there’s serious potential for a vehicle of this type in the market.

The Hyundai Santa Cruz ute concept shown at the Detroit motor show in January this year remains a “speculative product” that isn’t in the company’s mid-term Australian launch plans. That’s the line from Hyundai Australia COO John Elsworth, who told us this week that any prospect of a much-needed utility vehicle of any stripe remained up in the air at best.