3 Pickup Trucks With More Than 3 Years of Bumper-to-Bumper Warranty Coverage in 2023
For the most part, buying a new pickup truck is a very pricey endeavor. With the average price of a car rising to nearly $50k, coupled with higher interest rates on auto loans, buyers might be hanging on to their new purchases longer than ever, so a solid new car warranty really matters.
Detroit’s “big three” truck manufacturers — Ford, GM, and Ram — all have virtually identical bumper-to-bumper warranties of three years or 36,000 miles — whichever comes first — as do Toyota and Nissan. As the name implies, a bumper-to-bumper warranty, also known as a comprehensive or basic warranty, covers almost every vehicle component between the front and rear bumpers. That includes both parts and labor to repair the engine, transmission, suspension, HVAC system, electronics, interior trim, and more at no cost to the vehicle’s owner. However, wear items like tires, brake pads, and bulbs are typically excluded.
While it’s comforting to have any type of warranty coverage for your vehicle, there’s no doubt that a longer-than-normal bumper-to-bumper warranty is more valuable than just a powertrain warranty. With that in mind, here are a few trucks that extend that full coverage past the typical three-year period on the market.
1. Hyundai Santa Cruz
First up is the Hyundai Santa Cruz, a sole competitor to Ford’s Maverick in the compact truck market segment. When vehicles from Hyundai were first introduced to North America, they didn’t exactly have the best reputation for quality. One way that the brand restored consumer confidence in its products was to offer an outsized warranty to prove that build quality had improved and that Hyundai was willing to stand behind its products.
Even though Hyundai’s reputation for reliability is now roughly on par with its Japanese competitors, the brand continues to offer a five-year or 60,000-mile bumper-to-bumper warranty, including on its small crew-cab pickup, the Santa Cruz. While the Santa Cruz still hasn’t caught up to the brisk sales of the Ford Maverick, it offers higher towing capacity, a nicer interior, and an overall more car-like ride quality. Unfortunately, it’s also pricier than the Maverick, with the 2024 SE trim — the most basic model — coming in at $27,985, including a mandatory destination fee.
A bit of good news is that all-wheel drive is now optional on the SE at a cost of only $1,500, but upgrading from the Santa Cruz’s anemic 191 horsepower base engine to the 281-hp turbocharged powerplant requires selecting the Night trim or higher, which pushes the price up to at least $39,545.
2. Rivian R1T
Rivian has taken the all-electric truck market by storm with its R1T pickup truck. While not exactly inexpensive to buy at $73,000 plus destination fee for the base model, the R1T offers near-supercar performance and legitimate off-road chops in one slick package. It comes standard with such niceties as all-wheel drive, a 16-inch infotainment screen, and heated and ventilated seats. However, checking the option boxes for one of two larger battery packs and the quad-motor configuration with up to 835 horsepower can easily drive the price tag over $100,000.
Until recently, all Rivian trucks sported an impressive five-year or 60,000-mile comprehensive warranty. However, a few months ago, that policy was restricted to only the more expensive quad-motor variant of the R1T. New dual-motor R1Ts now come with a four-year or 50,000-mile bumper-to-bumper warranty, which is still more generous than most manufacturers but not as rock solid as it once was.
3. Tesla Cybertruck
Tesla provides a four-year or 50,000-mile Basic Vehicle limited warranty on all of its new vehicles, and the upcoming Cybertruck should be no exception, making it one of the few pickup trucks on the market that exceeds three years of comprehensive coverage. Originally promised in late 2021, Tesla’s sleek stainless steel Cybertruck is easily one of the most highly anticipated vehicles in history.
Tesla previously disclosed that full-scale production of its Cybertruck wouldn’t begin in earnest until sometime in 2024 but that a small handful of early units would be made available this year. Indeed, sightings of prototype test vehicles on public roads are getting more common.
On Oct. 9, 2023, InsideEVs reported that what’s being alternately referred to as either the first production Cybertruck — or simply one with a very low VIN — was sold at auction for a cool $400,000 at a Petersen Auto Museum event in Los Angeles. That’s approximately 10 times the Cybertruck’s supposed base price of $39,900 for the single-motor version, which admittedly seems way too good to be true with the rampant inflation of late. Besides the plain vanilla model, a dual-motor AWD version of the futuristic truck was pegged at $49,000, while a tri-motor AWD with a claimed 500 miles of range had a starting price of $69,900.
In recent comments to Forbes, as reported by Car and Driver, Tesla’s controversial CEO Elon Musk all but admitted that the price will be higher than originally anticipated, stating, “It’s going to be hard to make [it] affordable because it is a new car, a new manufacturing method.”
