DriveTimes Five
Toyota Hilux’s top five pop-culture moments
The Toyota Hilux pickup is an iconic piece of kit: it has been around for close to 40 years now (and for a big chunk of that time it was New Zealand’s top-selling ute).
But the venerable Hilux has also been a star on a number of occasions, making as much of an impact on popular culture as it does on sales figures. Today we take a look at the Hilux’s five top pop-culture moments.
Those telly ads
The Hilux’s biggest impact on popular culture in New Zealand came from the legendary TV ads featuring Lloyd Scott and Barry Crump that ran between 1982 and 1995. Crumpy thrashing a Hilux through the bush and scaring the hell out of Scotty never got old. It also built on the Hilux’s reputation for indestructibility.
Sadly, the ad where Scotty got his revenge with some equally keen city driving was quickly pulled after viewer complaints. But the next most famous (or infamous) Hilux ad was, of course, the brilliant ‘‘Bugger’’ commercial from 1999 that attracted 120 complaints to the ASA and spawned way too many stickers on cars.
Back to the Future
Arguably the second coolest car in the Back to the Future movies – after the DeLorean time machine, of course – was the fully kitted-up black 1985 Hilux that Marty McFly lusts after at his local Toyota dealership and eventually ends up owning.
A 4x4 SR5 Xtracab, the Hilux featured custom front and rear bumpers, a custom roll bar, KC Daylighter lights on the nudge bar and roll bar and 15-inch modular wheels running 31-inch Goodyear Wrangler tyres. The black Hilux became so popular over the intervening years that Toyota built up a modern version in 2015 (based on the US Tacoma) to celebrate the film’s 30th anniversary.
Top Gear
The Toyota Hilux is indestructible, right? While it certainly earned that reputation over the years, it was sealed in rather spectacular fashion when UK TV show Top Gear tried to destroy one. And completely failed to do so.
The show’s producers bought an 18-year-old Hilux diesel with 300,000km on the clock, then host Jeremy Clarkson did horrible things to it, including submerging it in the ocean for five hours, dropping a caravan on it, hitting it with a wrecking ball and setting it on fire. Ultimately it was placed on top of a tower block that was then demolished. When they dug it out of the rubble, it still worked.
Terror groups
Perhaps that indestructibility is why we also see so many Hiluxes on the news with large guns mounted on them – driven by angry people with points to prove. Rebels and terrorist groups the world over love the Hilux – and Toyota products in general, with the Land Cruiser and US Tacoma also being popular.
But nothing beats the image of a ‘‘Toyota’’ emblazoned Hilux tailgate with a huge gun mounted behind it, racing across a desert somewhere. That must be marketing gold for Toyota. Oh, wait...
Pixar movies
On a slightly more family-friendly note, it seems that the people at Disney’s Pixar animation studio are also big fans of the Hilux, because one has appeared in every single Pixar movie, apart from 2004’s The Incredibles.
OK, so it’s actually a ‘‘Gyoza Mark VII’’, but that’s for copyright purposes - it’s clearly and obviously a Hilux. It’s a beaten and rusty yellow Pizza Planet delivery vehicle and appears in a variety of forms including Lego, a carved wooden object and even in the Cars movies as an actual character called Todd. The reason it isn’t in The Incredibles? Um, they forgot it.