Comments
By pavel_lishin 2026-02-1020:143 reply > It is also a very robust vehicle capable of withstanding elemental and physical extremities, as shown on the British TV show “Top Gear.”[6]
If you haven't ever watched Top Gear, this is definitely one of the standout bits they did - putting that truck through absolute hell, and watching it continue to start up.
I highly recommend it, even if you don't think of yourself as a Car Guy. It's basically a comedy show that just happens to use cars.
For folks who have never seen it, these are the referenced Top Gear segments:
- part 1: https://youtu.be/xnWKz7Cthkk
- part 2: https://youtu.be/xnWKz7Cthkk
- part 3: https://youtu.be/kFnVZXQD5_k
Second link is wrong (links to part 1 again). Corrected: https://youtu.be/xTPnIpjodA8
By RockstarSprain 2026-02-1115:491 reply Remarkable how by the end of the third video it really starts to resemble the Cybertruck.
By bwv848 2026-02-1118:15 You should watch the Hammerhead Eagle i-Thrust episode.
I don’t doubt how tough the Hilux can be, but Top Gear tended to stage a lot of things. Like they intentionally killed Hammond’s Land Cruiser at the end of the Bolivia special. Plus, they had some pretty damn good mechanics, while Clarkson pretended to fix his cars with a hammer in front of the camera.
By ortusdux 2026-02-1022:27 IIRC, they have been caught pre-scripting scenes. The most famous incident being the Tesla Roadster debacle - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Gear_controversies#Tesla_R...
"A BBC spokeswoman said several times in an interview that Top Gear was "an entertainment programme, and should not be taken seriously."
By kube-system 2026-02-1021:311 reply Also the Hilux in that video hasn't been made this millennia, so the "shiny new ones" the article references likely isn't those.
By jeffrallen 2026-02-1114:571 reply They are in fact the same design. They are not available in regions with robust emissions laws, but they are still manufactured, sold and widely used in Africa and the Middle East.
They are sold by Toyota Gibraltar Stockholdings, look them up on YouTube.
By kube-system 2026-02-1117:01 You're thinking of the 70 Series Land Cruiser, which is an older platform that Toyota still manufactures and offers around the world... in some markets.
TGS is merely a distributor and outfitter of Toyota vehicles for the UN, who famously uses the 70 Series Land Cruiser. But, TGS manufactures zero vehicles -- they simply outfit and work on vehicles that Toyota currently makes.
TGS does offer the Hilux as well, but only the current 8th gen model: https://www.toyota-gib.com/en/models/hilux.html
The Hilux in the above Top Gear video is a 4th generation model, which started production in 1983, and was last manufactured in 1997 when the final plant in South Africa stopped manufacturing it.
By esalman 2026-02-112:38 I think there's a grand tour segment specifically addressing people who complain about a car show being staged.
Edit: it's S2E4 "Unscripted".
By esaym 2026-02-113:12 Try this one: https://youtu.be/Yl1FNX08HFc
By beAbU 2026-02-118:49 That hilux was basically just getting warmed up on top gear. They are indeed formiddable.
By hinkley 2026-02-1020:47 https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Gear%3A_Polar_Special Top Gear drives a heavily modified Toyota Hilux to the North Pole.
While I don't think it would prevent our troops from having foreign-produced trucks in theater, we can't affordably procure such trucks thanks to the Chicken Tax. I would also guess that giving a DoD contract to Toyota for a truck that may not be registrable in the US would also face institutional resistance.
The military has an incentive to ensure there are plenty of Americans who know how to design and manufacture things. A truck and a tank have a lot in common - if war breaks out we want the ability to take people of of trucks and get them making things the military needs.
This is the same reason the Navy has for building ships in the US even though they can be done other places cheaper.
By theluketaylor 2026-02-1022:371 reply > A truck and a tank have a lot in common
Maybe in 1942. Modern tanks cannot be built on highly specialized production lines that build road vehicles without years-long re-tooling. M1 Abrams tanks don't even use piston engines, they have turbines.
A older, but well documented example how specialized modern automotive production has become is the Mercedes Benz 500e. In the 90s Mercedes wanted to build a more powerful, wider version of the E class. They added 56 mm to the front fenders and discovered it wouldn't fit through the production line properly. MB contracted for Porsche to handle the low-volume 500e on a different production line.
By bluGill 2026-02-1023:14 if we need tanks we need people who can build assembly lines. Retooling existing lines isn't the only option.
By ASalazarMX 2026-02-1022:481 reply > This is the same reason the Navy has for building ships in the US even though they can be done other places cheaper.
You'd think the biggest war machine on the planet would benefit from economies of scale by now. If they want to stay sharp they could build commercial ships between the ocassional war ship.
By shiroiuma 2026-02-120:47 The company that builds aircraft carriers in the US tried exactly this back in the 1990s. It was a complete failure. They simply weren't at all competitive with foreign shipyards.
By wedog6 2026-02-1022:53 If you don't believe in the power and corruption of the military procurement industry and the military itself, then your comment is so unrealistic as to be deluded.
If you do believe in it, then it's simply irrelevant. Given the other reasons that the US military is spent with profligacy on US manufactured goods, maintaining 'truck know-how' does not register. If the know how consideration did not exist the money would still be spent in exactly the same way.
Also, because of CAFE standards, the US can't even attempt to create its own competing light trucks as everything needs to be fucking massive to maintain the emission exemptions.
The thinking was it would make cars more efficient but instead everyone just built obscenely large vehicles that were classified as trucks instead of passenger vehicles.
By thatcat 2026-02-1021:27 CAFE stopped being enforced in 2022 and don't apply going forward.
By bsder 2026-02-1023:03 As much as I like to slag on CAFE, we have been here before.
Automakers simply hate making affordable cars. MBAs extol "Number must go up! BRRRRRRR!" and you cannot do that with cheap cars.
Remember the 70s? What did the big automakers do? They made bigger and bigger cars ever shittier and jacked up the prices. Sound familiar?
And then what happened? Japan showed up and cleaned their clock. And then the protectionist laws got passed, but it didn't matter because the Japanese cars were smaller and better and used less gas. Sound familiar?
History may not repeat itself, but it sure likes to rhyme.
By AnthonyMouse 2026-02-1021:40 There are two ways to improve fuel economy. The first is technology (fuel injection, aerodynamics, hybrids, etc.). The second is to make the vehicle smaller.
The first one is a trade off against cost, but the market is already pretty good at handling that one on its own. Fuel injection and aerodynamics don't add much to the cost of a car, so pretty much everything has that now. Hybrid batteries are more expensive, but the price is coming down, and as it does the percentage of hybrid cars is going up. You don't really need a law for this; people buy it when the fuel savings exceeds the cost of the technology.
The second one is a trade off against things like cargo capacity. If you say that "cars" have to get >35 MPG at the point before hybrids are cost effective, or keep raising the number as the technology improves, it's essentially just a ban on station wagons. And then what do the people who used to buy station wagons do instead? They buy SUVs.
The entire premise is dumb. If you want more efficient vehicles then do a carbon tax which gets refunded to the population as checks, and then let people buy whatever they want, but now the break even point for hybrids and electric cars makes it worth it for more people.
By rootusrootus 2026-02-1020:552 reply Toyota has factories in the US where they produce pickups. They could build the Hilux here if they thought it would do well in the market.
That's the thing though, they can't, at least until the very recent advent of EVs. We used to have similar vehicles (the old 80s/90s ford ranger, tacoma, etc) but they were regulated out of existence by CAFE standards.
Even if you repealed CAFE today, the automakers have all built their entire business strategy around selling enormous expensive vehicles and generally despise producing lower cost options.
We are starting to see what appears to be the beginnings of a small pickup renaissance due to electrification but none have actually hit the market yet and trump has further stalled that progress by messing with EV subsidies and environmental standards.
By kube-system 2026-02-1021:35 The current Hilux is extremely close in size to the US Tacoma... It has also grown over the years. Although if you look at the footprint size (e.g. what CAFE measures), the Tacoma has the wheels a little more advantageously placed.
I am sure they could consolidate the models to work in both the US and abroad, but my guess is they do enough US volume that it is not yet advantageous to do so. There's already a number of major parts that have been shared recently between the Tacoma and Hilux... e.g. the 2TR-FE engine and AC60 transmission. But usually Toyota chooses to spec the Tacoma as a more up-market vehicle, which makes sense given the US market.
In 1993 I paid a shade under $10k for a new Chevy S10 where the only options were AC (not actually optional in Texas) and CD player in the radio. It was manual transmission, V6. Indexed to inflation that would be, what, about $24k today if regs allowed them to be built?
If it existed they would fill every rural high school parking lot in the south. Allow them to exist and someone will build them.
By kjkjadksj 2026-02-1118:01 My dad paid like $14k new for his pretty basic 2004 tacoma. It had the frame recall not very long ago but the bumpers are all rust pitted. Still doesn’t stop strangers from regularly giving him cold offers in the parking lot for close to what he paid new 20 years ago. People desperately want these trucks.
They are massive because of the cafe standards. There's plenty enough of a market for smaller trucks, even the Ford Maverick which is closer to a car with a bed sold out immediately.
I like my big truck but when it dies, if there's a small truck available that lets me plow snow and tow logs in the forest, I'll get it.
By shawn_w 2026-02-1023:22 Smaller trucks don't have the suspension etc. for mounting a snow plow, or heavy towing. Those are applications where a bigger heavy duty truck make sense.
By itopaloglu83 2026-02-1120:23 Military supply chain would like to go multiple levels to see if things can be acquired even under the war conditions.
By mjhay 2026-02-1020:53 Regarding Western military procurement,
“We have such sights to show you!”
By NedF 2026-02-1021:08 [dead]
By taniks1618 2026-02-1020:136 reply I wish it was easy and simple to buy the Hilux in America. Many amazing foreign vehicles have been banned or heavily taxed by the Federal Government to prevent competition.
By cosmic_cheese 2026-02-1020:482 reply Imagine how much nicer driving around in the suburbs would be if the majority of vehicles were town cars like Honda Fits, mini-mini-vans like Honda Freed, pre-2003 Tacomas, and kei trucks/vans instead of the usual mix of unreasonably tall and boxy crossovers/SUVs and brodozer trucks.
Well I don't think it would be that much different, truthfully. The problem of the suburbs is a matter of layout and zoning, not so much the vehicles used. If you fix the layout and zoning it'll naturally reduce vehicle size.
By jaredklewis 2026-02-1021:221 reply Would better zoning have a bigger impact? Of course.
But it would definitely make an impact. If you are driving a Honda fit, there is no distance at which you can’t see my kids.
In a ford f-150, the driver probably needs to be at least a dozen feet away to see my kids
By ericmay 2026-02-1116:43 Yea you're right about that. I didn't mean to imply otherwise though it seems I did.
I guess what I meant to say was, to actually solve this problem we also need structural changes so that even driving one of these vehicles in our cities is a bit uncomfortable and so that it's less common precisely because of the reason you specified and many more.
As we build and design better cities, people will naturally not want to buy such vehicles except if they have actual needs for them. I mean, you should be able to buy whatever you want. If you want a giant truck by all means go for it, but society shouldn't cater to edge cases, especially when they cause hazards like the one you described.
I think you probably know this because you used the US name for the car (internationally known as the Jazz), but for those who don’t, Honda discontinued the Fit in the US market due to poor sales. For every internet comment bemoaning the lack of these vehicles there’s the actual fact of revealed consumer preference in the US market.
By cosmic_cheese 2026-02-1021:332 reply Much of consumer preference doesn't originate from the consumers' own minds, though. It's shaped largely by marketing, and in the US car companies have been pushing bigger, boxier, more plush, and more expensive with its ad spend and incentives for decades now. It's way easier to find a dealership offering 0%-2% financing on some aircraft carrier of a vehicle than it is on a small car.
By kube-system 2026-02-1022:471 reply Americans' appetite for small cars seems to be linked pretty closely to the inflation-adjusted price of gasoline. Automakers always want to push more premium vehicles, because they make their margins selling to people with more money to buy more features, more space, more performance. The low end of the market is lower margin and you have to make up for it with volume.
When we hit another recession, we'll see smaller cars appear again.
Fuel coast only go up and never down. The market and politicians make it seem like it will go down but in the end it still rises slowly. This is something that most people cannot understand nor want to.
I drive a car and will never buy a truck or SUV because it allows me spend the least amount on fuel. It also allows me to see in front of the vehicle while making it easier to maneuver in tight spots.
American car culture is built on self projection not about functionality.
Great example of this are people who say they bought a truck so the can take home large items from a hardware store. Yet they only will do this less than ten times a year ... making renting a truck and owning a car more economical in the long run.
Evolution of the tuck bed being 60% and cap being 40% in the 1950s to cab being 60% and bed being 60% shows it is not even about functionality of a truck being a truck.
If I have to haul something, I will rent and not waste my time and money maintaining a large vehicle.
By kube-system 2026-02-1122:49 The real cost of fuel absolutely goes up and down. It has bounced back and forth between $2 and $6 of today's money for the past century.
If you're looking only at nominal figures, then what you're seeing is the inflation of the dollar, not the change in how much gasoline costs.
By Amezarak 2026-02-1022:51 This is a roundabout way of saying Americans are willing to spend more money on bigger car because they like them better.
Aside from urban cores with limited parking and lots of narrow streets, it’s obvious that “bigger” means more utility regardless of marketing. You can fit more people and more stuff more comfortably (apparently people really prefer the spacious people room even above room for stuff). People are not being brainwashed by ads.
By kube-system 2026-02-1022:131 reply The current Hilux really isn't much different than a Tacoma to call it "amazing"
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/Upacara_...
The old Hilux that was on Top Gear hasn't been made for a quarter century.
By testing22321 2026-02-1022:451 reply It is vastly different. Different engine, gearbox, axles, brakes.
They share no parts.
Its payload is double, its fuel economy is way better. It’s way, way tougher.
I’m an Aussie living in Canada, I’ve driven many models of both extensively, family have them all.
By kube-system 2026-02-1022:581 reply They are both offered in a variety of configurations, and some parts are sometimes shared between the two. e.g. the 2TR-FE engine and AC60 transmission. Parts sharing is routine in the industry. The vast majority of parts on most vehicles are shared with other vehicles.
But yes, the Hilux is built to be a work truck, the Tacoma is built as a passenger vehicle that can do truck things.
By testing22321 2026-02-1023:03 Nobody in the history of ever bought a Hilux with a gas engine.
I’ve driven through 70 countries on five continents, I’ve never seen a non-diesel Hilux.
Even vehicles that are largely the same as those we get here are banned from being brought in. All because Mercedes didn't like being undercut by gray market imports and lobbied the government.
By Tade0 2026-02-1020:45 There's a similar thing currently going on in some parts of Europe, but the imported cars are for the Chinese market.
In one high-profile case a Berlin-based VW dealership was importing the VW ID.6, which is a model exclusive to China:
https://www.shop4ev.com/en/blogs/news/verkaufsverbot-id-6-bl...
By TitaRusell 2026-02-1020:561 reply America will become like East Germany and the Trabant.
And thanks to Trump's antics Detroit is losing the Mexican and Canadian markets...
By herbst 2026-02-128:40 Have you been to eastern Europe lately? That's an insult for them
By mywittyname 2026-02-1021:001 reply The Hilux isn't "banned" from the USA. Toyota can federalize it and sell it here at any time. Toyota doesn't bring it here because we have the Tacoma - a truck designed to be more inline with American consumer tastes.
If Toyota wanted to, they could readily start manufacturing Hiluxes in Mexico and importing them into the USA. Presumably, the reason they don't do this is because Americans hate small pickup trucks. Every single truck on sale in the USDM sells better in larger footprint spec.
There's maybe 20k American who are willing to buy a new truck with the wheelbase the size of a Mustang (smallest Hilux). Even small BoF SUVs have the same problem. Take the FJ Cruiser, despite being a cult classic, it sold terribly in the USA, likely due to being too small.
Plus, they are expensive. In Australia, the cheapest non-work-spec Hilux trim is ~$55k - which is like $38kUSD. A Tacoma starts cheaper than that and is much larger.
By kube-system 2026-02-1021:59 CAFE doesn't prevent them from producing or selling it here, plenty of automakers just pay CAFE fines. The Tacoma and Hilux are very similar in overall size, but the Tacoma does have the wheels pushed slightly closer to the corners, likely for this reason.
However, current CAFE fines are capped to a whopping $0.00
The Hilux is also pretty tall and narrow, which I am guessing is very advantageous in markets where most buyers drive them on unpaved roads, and not very advantageous in countries where highway rollover tests are performed and they are primarily operated on highways with 12' wide lanes.
By rootusrootus 2026-02-1020:56 Toyota must not think it is that amazing, else they would use their pickup factory in Texas to make Hilux's to sell here.
