Hard to dispute Hilux's iconic status among farm vehicles

01-02-2008 | Richard Rennie

It is a bizarre endorsement for any vehicle's versatility. The same model truck that carts hay into a cold high country morning on the Lindis Pass also careers through the desert with a mounted rifle and a load of military rebels on the back.

The Toyota Hilux is just that vehicle. Its robustness and flexibility have delivered huge global appeal, with 12 million sold in its 40 year lifetime. For Toyota it is second only to the equally ubiquitous Corolla, which has sold 32 million in a similar lifetime.

Not called on for militarised rampages here in New Zealand (yet), the Hilux has tapped into the psyche of ruggedness and independence rural New Zealanders are so proud of.

Today there would be few farmers who could claim never to have had a Hilux in one of its many shapes and sizes, and more than a few who have seen the machine move through generations.

Toyota first coined the Hilux name and model in 1969, replacing a small 1.9 litre machine called the Stout. Body style was simple, a regular cab, rear wheel drive powered by a 1.9 litre 63kW motor.

It came at a time when Land Rovers were still more common, the English stalwarts for many years the only alternatives to tractors when it came to off roading for farmers. The closest NZ had got to providing anything locally was the Trekka - a locally designed and built truck that had a patchy history with its demanding rural users.

Competition from other Japanese marques was also thin at the time.

Bruce Buckland, Toyota NZ's technical manager, says as late as 1979 the main players were Mitsi's L200 Triton, the Mazda B series ute and the Hilux. Ford Courier entered the market in 1980.

A radical redesign of the truck in 1975 with a larger engine and an upscale trim package was when the Hilux really began to make its mark in the provinces.

Early promotion had been more generic about its use, with the first brochures showing the pickup in use in a more urban setting, perhaps given the lack of 4WD at that point.

In the United States the brand Hilux was dropped in favour of truck, or more often becoming the Toyota pickup.

A whole new ute market was created in 1984 when Toyota launched the double cab ute, with an uprated 2.2 litre motor.

Today the Hilux remains market leader in the ute market, selling around 4000 units a year, and the majority are in double cab guise.

It is a position held for 25 years straight, and shared in the small car market with the Toyota Corolla, almost equal in its place in Kiwi motorists' hearts.

Bruce Buckland says the machine's dominance in the NZ rural market has been helped by local production and locally made advertisements working to create a strong local ownership around a global brand.

The local content of the Hilux, in both the advertisements used to promote it and where the machine was built, did much to help endear it to the market.

Production here took place for many years until the mid-nineties at Thames and Christchurch plants.

With the smaller production runs it was simple for companies to make specific requests on paint colours or trim specs, and there was considerable local input to the specifications of the Hilux sold here.

"These related mainly to spring settings, tyres and trim levels."

He says this is more difficult to achieve with today's models manufactured out of Thailand.

However the company continues to run its own test track in Palmerston North, and do winter snow tyre testing at Cardrona.

Despite the small market here in New Zealand of 4000 vehicles a year, Toyota's engineers and management hold it in high regard for the multiple uses Hilux utes are put to, and the long running success their machine has enjoyed here in NZ, says Buckland.

"There is no doubt, the advertisements have helped with all that too. We were doing quite well with Hilux, then the Barry Crump advertisements really pushed things along for us."

Starting in 1982 with the Colenso Crump and Scotty advertisements, the adverts were a departure from traditional "getting you home" ute genre.

Scotty's initial warning to Crump about the road "getting a bit bumpy in here" was a nicely understated signal to put the Hilux through its paces through to the end when a shell shocked Scotty was offered a cup of tea to calm his frayed nerves.

The series continued for several years, with the indestructible Hilux and its irrepressible driver ultimately pausing at the bottom of a huge drop to "wait for the dogs to catch up Scotty".

Toyota played strongly on local talent for promotion with the Corolla as well. Local racing legend Chris Amon had a large part in promoting and designing the Corona, while local interior designer Jan Beck did the trim for the revolutionary front wheel drive Corolla and Hilux models.

The adverts will no doubt become part of a Te Papa exhibition at some stage, the ability of Saatchi's to capture laconic rural humour with the HiLux's undaunted strength won awards and attention.

The "Bugger" ads also earned a degree of notoriety and coveted PR, with far more Aussies offended at the vernacular than Kiwis.

Bruce Buckland says the advertisements are so popular with their Japanese masters they are played to them every time a delegation comes to company headquarters in Palmerston North.

The aura of Hilux invincibility has been enforced with the popular United Kingdom car show Top Gear buying an old 1988 Hilux with 300,000km on the clock and proceeding to find out how much more life remained in the old machine.

It turned out to be plenty. After driving it down the steps of the Bristol Cathedral, crashing into a tree, leaving it in the tide, dropping a caravan on it and leaving it on top of a set of flats demolished by explosives, the machine continued to live.

Watchers of Top Gear will know the Hilux now has pride of place in the programme's studio.

This year Top Gear presenters Richard Hammond and Jeremy Clarkson kitted out a new generation Hilux to travel to become the first men to drive to the North Pole.

A customised machine looking even more business-like than usual features massive 30-plus inch low pressure tyres, special differentials, and a gun holster to control marauding polar bears.

The latest model Hilux is officially the sixth generation. While diehard fans may lament the loss of leaf
spring suspension front and rear, the new Hilux reflects how broad the appeal of the double cab ute has become.

Double cab sales now account for 84% of the sales, the extra cab for 9% and 6% in the original single cab configuration.

No market better represents the cross over between lifestyle and work than the rural market. The same ute used to pick up kids from school, also gets work done on the farm and pulls the boat to the beach over summer.

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