Toyota Hilux: The Indestructible Truck

The Toyota Hilux, your average everyday pickup made for farm work but could just as easily be found in the city. A half-ton small size pickup truck with two very special generations, The 4th and 5th gen Hilux spanned from 1983-1997. These cars were literally unbreakable!

In Season three of Top Gear, Jeremy Clarkson dedicated a special feature on the legendary Toyota Hilux with a model from 1988. He literally beat the crap out of that Hilux driving it down stairs, lighting it on fire and hitting it with a wrecking ball. And you know what, after all that beating, it still ran and drove fine. But Clarkson wasn’t finished yet, the next test for the little red truck was to place it in the ocean at low tide and leave it there for over 24 hours. After draining the water and a quick oil change (the oil tank was filled with water) and a little bit of praying the Hilux started and ran.

Clarkson then drove it home and thought about the next idea to try and kill the Hilux. Knowing that there was an old office building that was going to be torn down soon, Top Gear placed the Hilux at the very top of the tower and watched as the explosives blew the building to a pile of rubble. Most people, including the Top Gear crew doubted the little truck would survive the destruction. But, after some searching an hour later they found the red truck. The crew pulled it out relatively intact and with no issues, the car started right up. The body damage was significant but the truck survived. But why? How did this small Japanese truck survive something that no other vehicle could have ever done?

Well, it was mainly to do with the simplicity of the truck. There was no airbag, no ABS, no power windows, no power seats and no AC in some models. As Jerimiah Burton said about this truck “It’s simple...and when you make stuff simple the less stuff can break” A big part about this truck was its frame. Toyota made a box frame (four sided box) which was rare for trucks because it meant the bed and cab were more rigid. The C frame (three-sided C) had a lot more flex to it because it only had one beam that supported the frame, but the box had two. This also meant that the C frame was more fragile. But there is a reason that all trucks have the C frame these days, and that is cost. It is about twice as expensive to make a box frame.

Toyota got over the cost issues by making stuff as simple as possible. The inline four engine that Toyota put in the Hilux was also one of the most reliable engines ever built. You could run with no oil for over 20,000 miles. I also read something about someone using three cylinders for over two years without fixing it. They are also some of the easiest engines to work on because, again, they are so simple. You could even get up to 30MPG with the 148 Horsepower diesel four-banger.

It really just makes me wonder, why is it so hard to make new cars reliable. The main reason is the pure amount of tech and moving parts, the more parts the more stuff that could break and that’s why the more simple the car is the less it will break. It will get a lot harder for mechanics to service cars these days because of how complex they are getting. Even with new cars like Teslas you have to contact their factory support team to ask them to mod the car, otherwise, it will not turn on properly. The Hilux is a good example of what cars used to be. They are getting harder and harder to work on, and I have a very good feeling it will be like that for a while.

Cover Credit: Top Gear UK