Toyota Hilux review

Hate to puncture the suspense here, but the Hilux drives like A Pick-Up Truck. Like everyone who builds trucks of this shape and size, Toyota talks a good game about SUV-ifying the experience, but the combination of leaf springs, fat tyres, a tall ride height and the weight distribution of a lonely see-saw mean all of these things share some pretty common traits. You’re unlikely to mistake the road manners for a Range Rover’s.

While you sense the ride’s more settled down at the rear than pick-ups of yore, and body roll has been contained for such a tall beast, you’re still jostled and rattled about on your Brunellian ladder frame and 19th Century frontiersman suspension. The twirly, sluggish steering is slow and remote, devoid of any feel, and the brakes are grabby. Roundabouts are less than fun.

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Toyota stubbornly stuck with carthorse springs – albeit with new bushes – to stay true to the Hilux’s roots. While admitting they give away ride comfort and refinement, Toyota insists you’ll forgive that when they soak up years of maintenance-free punishment that’d cripple coil springs. If this truck is your business workhorse, time off the road equals money out of your pocket, and for that hardiness you’ll likely accept a bit of roughshod road performance.

On the whole, the six-speed automatic gearbox guesses the right ratio at the right time, and teamed with the 201bhp, 369lb ft four-cylinder turbodiesel engine, the Hilux makes respectable progress.

How respectable are we talking?

Officially, it’s good for 0-62mph in 10.7 sec, while the entry-level 2.4 lags behind with 148bhp, 295lb ft and a 2.7sec tardier nought-to-sixty sprint, while barely being any more economical. The boon of the 2.8 is it doesn’t need thrashing to keep up with traffic, though be aware if you’re happier with a manual your torque output drops to 310lb ft with a stick-shift. 

The Hilux’s more relevant vital stats are on the money. It’ll tow 3,500kg, the payload is just over a tonne, and the load bay itself measures 1525mm long by 1645mm wide.

And what if I want to go off road?

There’s now an automatic limited-slip diff which works in two-wheel drive mode and means you can get surprisingly far into the wild before engaging full-time four-wheel drive. The transmission offers a low-range mode for serious off-road work, and there’s a foolproof hill descent assistant across most of the range. Ground clearance is a lofty 310mm and it’ll ford streams up to 700mm deep. Across the range, engine idle speed has been lowered a smidge, so the car now creeps more smoothly – useful in the rough.