hello and welcome to Motoring Quest today we have a very special episode for you because today we have Toyota's flagship car for India i think the Toyota Hilux okay it's not the flagship but it is the most recognizable Toyota right is the Toyota where if you're in a fortuner and you see one in the rearview mirror you move out of the way and let the Hilux go through right that is true that is true the Hilux isn't the flagship but it is carrying a lot of weight for sure explain okay this is just about what happened i was driving it this morning and because of what the Hilux is you have to drive it in a particular way so you have to drive it with the acceptance that this thing is big and I think that is the key statement about the Hilux it's just massive the Fortuna itself is big this is even bigger than the Fortuna like the wheelbase is some that much longer and the overall length is that much longer it's like an additional house at the back my parking I've got a picture of that everything fits in the parking usually the Hilux has its chin nose face hanging out of the parking like that it's that big and I reversed it as close as I dared to the wall at the back and I had that's only to protect the wall from the hilocks i'm just saying so I was driving it and by the time I got to the expressway I was driving from Pune to Mumbai and by the time I got to the expressway I had kind of settled into this mood that this you have to drive with grace right you're not hurrying this thing around it's not that the performance is lacking or anything but it's that big you don't If you went making lane changes in this thing and somebody's watching in the rearview mirror they're going to think there's an apocalypse coming their way you know it's just going to look that terrifying he said apocalypse not the usual target group for the Hilux yeah okay uh we not supposed to make that joke so we won't make it again so when I got to the expressway race I was settled into the groove of driving the Hilux and which was like okay you sit around say you're holding 100 and it's effortless at that speed and when you get into the fast lane to overtake somebody and you realize that after that there's another vehicle you realize everybody's just kind of and the interesting thing was there were two groups that did this and that took me by surprise okay one was the innovas right and innovas usually have you know They are king of the road so to speak the innovas watch you in the mirrors and they notice you're coming up i have not flashed nothing i've just sat at the back and the first opportunity they get move over and you go through same thing with fortunes fortunes are just like yeah okay fine but the interesting thing was the cabs the cabs would pull over usually on the expressway the desires and the erteers and all will just sit there at 80 and not budge but yet they notice the Hilux coming and everybody just kind of moves over and I know when we did the fortuner story somebody commented saying that you know my dad bought the fortuner and he said the reason he bought the fortune and that's his reason is I live in India and I don't like to honk so that was I thought it was like that was that made so much sense yeah that's why I wouldn't buy a Creta because I don't like to flash okay uh and in this and if you have a Hilux you don't have to flash at the Creta to get get it out of the way everything moves everything moves it might also be that the car that we are driving is a little bit loud because it's uh wearing some graphics and it's also wearing a lot of accessories but that doesn't matter but it's a car that gets attention yeah our our car is spectacular because you've got the Citroen Bizor door handles on top of the wheel arches it's a very well done car and a roll cage on our car which says this is not a roll cage this is just a what decorative accessories so all the stuff that he's mentioned all of it is accessories right from the cladding on the wheel arches to that roll cage all of it even the bed liner all of that is accessories so the car as stock will not look as loud and will not have as many Hiluxes but the point is this car doesn't need any of that because by default it is a massive car and I think that aside from the name I think that was part of the appeal of these cars yeah absolutely it's the size of it and the outlandish image of a pickup truck in our world and so I would understand a lot of people are drawn to this by default just as a hey man this will be so cool to have i mean I'm in that boat for sure and uh the whole curiosity was all the more heightened because we' just driven the Fortuner a little while back and it was a refresher about what the Fortuna stood for and we realized that the Fortuna has moved ahead in so many ways it's become a nicer car as it were it's still a Fortuna but it's it's become a it's become a more pleasing machine now it's become smoother nicer to ride uh in terms of the suspension it's become quieter more fun as it were so yeah so do do you know the fundamental difference between the Fortune and the Hilux i mean they share the platform and all that but you know the fundamental difference if you upgrade your Fortuner you get a legender the Hilux is just a legend okay yeah so after uh the Hilux is I mean there's no two ways about that but again coming from that standpoint if you start from there the Hilux the legend is built on its utility y it is here in India as a lifestyle choice of course but the bottom line is that in the in India utility is a lif lifestyle choice bro and it is a utility vehicle so that was the big learning for me out of this drive that after I got into the Hilux and you you'll know the basics that they are built on the same platform the IMV platform on which the Christa was made the fortune is made and this is made and so you'll expect a closer relationship between this and the fortune you know because they're also sharing the engines they're sharing the gearboxes so the engine is a 2.8 L 4-cylinder diesel uh which has 200 something horsepower and like with the Fortuna the automatic gets it in 500 Newton meter tune and the manual gets 420 Newton meter and we got the manual we were driving the manual but when you get in and drive the car you realize it's such a different experience it's a completely different mood okay like I have come away from driving the fortune and saying I enjoyed driving this right i enjoyed driving it quickly even right it had some sense of being connected you enjoyed it on the highway because of the quietness of it and all of that and then when you step into the Hilux and you and you get that this is definitely more utility oriented it has a lot of like when you get in the cabin the dashboard looks just like the fortunes that similarity is there but the driving experience everything tells you that this is how different first the steering heavy like at low speeds it's heavy then when you get going the suspension you just it's like if I have to say people who have driven tharss can appreciate this oh okay right it has that feel about it when it goes over bumps you'll get rattled around you so the median on the road is an optional activity you don't have to worry about those kind of things but you'll be going over like normal stuff and you'll get rattled around and you'll be like in this car how could this happen you know but that's the thing it's so focused on being uh built for doing really tough things and carrying a load and all of that that the regular stuff feels starts to feel a little crude sure because it's running light so used to happen to the gypsy also i remember on the exact opposite end of the weight spectrum correct right where if you didn't have a gypsy fully loaded up it would just like shake through everything and you' be like "Who wants to live with this?" That's exactly the thing like unless and until you get the sense okay so you feel all this like when you're going through the city over smaller stuff that will rattle you but you get over really bad stuff then you settle down then it gets smoother and better you're going faster over it it's better it's more bad stuff if it's just one thing you'll feel it you go over a series of things like that and it'll be like "Oh I can't feel it as much." So everything the more stress that it goes through the less it conveys to you it's like that so initially it'll feel more rattly and shaky and all of that but the more abuse it's having to deal with the more work it has to do the less is transmitted to you right so it's a car that's meant to do hard work and choosing to have it as a lifestyle vehicle as a companion for the imagery of it is going to be a compromise there's no two ways about it right this is the similar thought that I had uh when I drove the even the new gen back to uh from Mumbai to Pune and back i was like yeah this is a lot better than what the previous gen was but would I want to do it again right i can do it but would I want to do it again correct and immediately as I got into the Hilux the thought was yeah this is the kind of vehicle you get in and say I'm going to go see the world and you know just travel with it and the thought was how much time would it take for me to make peace with this aspect of it right so that was one of the key thoughts for me when I was driving it so the heavy steering when you're going faster it's okay it's not so heavy the engine it's a again that's also has a very different feel okay before I move to the engine the chassis itself because it's so much longer it's meant to carry heavy loads like this thing interestingly they don't quote boot space for this right it doesn't have a boot if you if Shumi goes with his usual Hyundai style all to the ceiling there's no ceiling here right so you can stack as much as you want so they actually quote uh payload capacity which is under 500 kilos so you can put in half a ton of stuff back there correct right and the suspension tune would be to account for that which is why when it when the half ton is missing then exactly so on slow speeds you'll be shaken but not stirred but when you go fast you'll be stirred but not shaken so it's it's a vehicle that has been the chassis also it feels different from the Fortuna it doesn't feel like the same kind of tune like the front end of course similar kind of setup but the rear is completely different it's got leaf springs it doesn't have coilovers like that so it's a different setup at the rear and you can feel that uh the way it behaves over the broken bits you can tell that so it's in it started from how it feels i looked that up afterwards and I was like this doesn't feel the same and then I realized that yeah because there's a lot more done to it for it to work as a pickup in the first place right uh the good thing is that the engine is easy to drive i was driving a manual and the clutch is heavy m this car has done 16,000 journalist kilm so it's not a young car correct but the car itself the performance was smooth like you were doing all your work between 750 and 1500 RPM just intrinsically you were shifting up at you look down yeah it's 1500 it's done its business so you're sitting in sixth gear 100 km an hour 1500 RPM it's completely relaxed there's nothing you're you're hopping around like that on the expressway but The engine is completely unstressed so the engine is effortless but is it engaging like it was in the Fortuna it's not there is a difference in the way it's delivering performance right it doesn't have that same spiritedness about it so I How much heavier is it than the Fortuna um I don't know off hand but I think it would be about 200 300 kilos something like that i'm I'm guessing i don't know right now um and I took it I was driving down from Pune but I also drove back up just to do the highway section i mean the guard section and on the old highway so which is tighter and all of that and you realize that it doesn't feel that spirited then so I put into power mode and as with Toyotas the drive modes really make a distinct difference right so you put into power mode and then it's like yeah now it's gone into the zone of driving quickly so it has the ability to do that with a load but it's not a car that you automatically you look at it and you'll feel like man this is going to be fun but it's not that kind of a fun it's a workhorse it's a workhorse absolutely and in this there's one tech that I got to use again after a really long time and I'd like to talk about that is that Toyota's had this since the the Christa came out if I'm not wrong it I think it came with or it came with the Fortuna itself it when the Fortuna came out they brought in this thing called IMT intelligent manual transmission it's a really clever little thing what it does is effectively rev matches so when you're downshifting it'll rev up the revs okay when you're upshifting it'll again smoothen out the torque flow and I can't tell you how much of a difference it actually makes in your uh Got it okay so like that subtle sense of that torque brake it handles that so nicely and these are the small things that make driving such a big vehicle even so much simpler so that that if you pick a manual you'll definitely you should use that it's a button that you can activate it and you should try it out it's not a gimmick it will help you out drive make make the drive smoother so uh and it's been there for ages but we haven't driven the auto I mean the manual in a long time we've been driving the automatics so that was one thing uh the surprising thing with the car is like despite its size you get used to it really quickly really quickly um the width is not more than the fortune so it's the same thing it's just a long thing it's just long but the I think the big difference is because your rear window is so large that you you can see everything at the back you can see just the edge of the tailgate over there and then you can see the entire road behind you so you quickly get comfortable with the size of the car that wasn't the thing that bothered me in this time that I was driving it sure it's just initially when you get into the car and you start driving and you're like you're conscious of this being a big car but other than that you stop thinking about it size the only other time he'll start thinking about the size again is when you have to make a U-turn because it is big it takes you have to like if it's a normal road as well if you're making a U-turn you're going to have to back up and uh to make the turn it It's big and then Yeah heavy so it'll make you work um in the cabin Toyotaesque like I said Fortuneresque dashboard so down market so high quality down market uh yeah i mean like built to last that kind of sense you get everything functionally fine but no sense of occasion right no zero yeah nothing the first time I ever saw a Hilux my first reaction was I was not sure how expensive the car is but when I see the interior it doesn't look like an expensive car's interior mhm no and I think even if it was simpler like you know there are a lot of details like if you see the instrument cluster the surround for the dials it has these beveled edges and like as though it's been chiseled with a hammer and that kind of stuff you know like stuff which is there but I think a simpler design would even make this look uh better over time so there are all those kind of things which I still feel that they are trying to do stuff but it's not really quite hitting the mark simplicity could just help the car as well in terms of its design but the seats great and the one thing I want to point out eightway power adjustable driver seat and in with the Hilux they have effectively just one trim it's called the high so you're buying the high H highilux yes you only have the option of a manual transmission or an automatic transmission that's it and the variant that you buy is the high Hilux highux automatic and the high yeah correct and uh there is a standard but the standard is basically meant for commercial use that's not what you and I would buy and the equipment wise is it's u dual zone air conditioning and all of that um what you will not get is a dash tech which is okay yeah what you would want in a car like this is a 360° camera which you don't get you have reversing camera and front parking sensors thankfully they all work well the reversing camera is It's actually lot of cameras don't give you a good sense of uh depth so you have to guess a lot in this that's not the case like right where I started the first time I parked it in my parking lot and it's not particularly bright there i could gauge how much space I had left and that was that was good the front parking sensors were useful uh especially when you were stopped in traffic and there were there was passing traffic would just quickly draw attention uh to people moving around and which is good to the small cars that are just passing by just under your bonnet line which you can't see you know there are lot of small instances like you know bikes will cut through and all and you're like thank god with this it's a good thing to have so on the whole um the bottom line for me is that this is a car that is functionality oriented and even in the cabin it is a comfortable cabin to travel in the seats I really liked Um the AC worked well all of that cruise control was good the back seat better than I expected it's not cramped uh there is enough space so it's not super spacious but it's not going to be cramped either yeah like if you're a sixfooter and you're planning to spend like let's say going from Delhi to Mumbai you're not going to like it while there is space you're still not sitting that high up and stuff right it's for a couple of hours or so you'll be fine but that back seat is better for shorter adults like me that uh for longer distances so and before you say it please don't stick your children in the p in the load bay that's not what it's supposed to be theoretically it's illegal and it's enormously unsafe yeah over a bump yeah and yeah on that note talking about bumps in the back seat if you unless at city speeds unless you're going really slow over speed breakers you're just going to go just from the driver's seat to that back seat it's not that far away right in the overall length of the car but immediately the difference is so much like when I spent time in the back you could feel that oh every speed breaker when I was driving Aditya around Adita was in the back I was like "Yeah I got to go slow with that because I can see him going." So it's a functionoriented machine that is being positioned as a lifestyle vehicle for our market and u I don't know what the scene is globally apparently I saw this on Vicki that u Toyota have three different states of tune for the suspension depending on which market so they have one comforttoriented one for Thailand because that's where pickups are like everyday vehicles right then they have one which is utility oriented which goes to Australia and stuff like that and then there's one which is a balance of both um I don't know which one we've got here in India but this to me I think it's the balance of both one it's not the hardcore one i don't think this is the comfort one if this is the comfort one not a happy space so if you're looking at an Hilux as a lifestyle vehicle keep in mind that it's utility first and lifestyle second correct right uh aside from that it's got Okay okay and that's the other thing like everybody looks at this and thinks "Oh my god off-road." Yes it has off off-road running gear as I mean 4x4 gear as standard and it's electronically activated from two wheel high to four-wheel high it's it's a workhorse off-roader not a recreational off-road correct so a lot of people will automatically want to say that let's take this this will go anywhere no this is not that kind it'll do a lot it'll do a lot of stuff but is this the vehicle you pick to say that I'm going to climb a mountain no this is this is this is not that it's also a big vehicle and you have to keep that in mind every time yep i I remember we were shooting something and we had a pajaro an endeavor and a couple of other off-roaders and a little mm or a CJ340 540 something like that right and we were in the tea estates uh in Korg I think right and we were going some back road inside the coffee estate and everything but the endeavor did not struggle through that trail and it was just the weight and the length of the endeavor as the slush got deeper and deeper it became slipperier and slipperier the smaller cars they were in their element ultimately the endeavor basically lost traction and went sideways into a ditch like this at 0 kbh oh yeah and it was not a failure on the end's part it was just too large to be an off-roader in those conditions and then three of us sat on the bonnet of the little Mahindra and we pulled the endeavor out and then the endeavor was given to the most experienced off-roader in that group with the same caveat saying it's it has four-wheel drive or whatever but it's not in the same category of off-roaders so where the pajger would just skip through things mhm and the MM540 wouldn't even start to wake up and take notice of these things the Endeavor was already struggling just because of weight and size this is why a gypsy off-road will defeat a lot of much bigger and much more capable cars because it simply isn't struggling with its own weight or wheelbase and which is the case with the Jimny today like if you're I mean we'll keep saying this if you're serious about going off-roading you can't do better than that so the Hilux for most people who are touring recreationally and going off-road it will work but if you're in that group that thinks "I want to go Sunday off-roading with my friends and hit the really hard stuff," you're going to make a lot of mods first and still it will be a really large and heavy car and it's not a great combination for that kind of hardcore work and if you look at what goes into the rainforest challenge where the really hardcore stuff happens nobody has a large car so yeah so the Hilux I think aside from being the utility utility focused machine that it is I think the other challenge for it is it price time because it starts at some 32 lakhs that's what they're telling you on the website yeah the actual prices are lower yeah so so that's that's uh definitely been the case i think if you make a phone call to a dealer you get 5 lakh off and if you land up there so there's uh it goes up to 38 lakhs and whereas the Isuzu 38 lakhs being the automatic high H highilux uh yeah and now they have a black edition that's just come out a black edition yeah so it's got all the chrome bits blacked out the Hilux badges also that I'm not sure of i've only seen it on my desktop well if Rolls-Royce can have the black badge edition in Toyota they certainly have the Hilux black right absolutely and they are doing it it's about the same price 38 lakhs or so now I think that's the other problem for the Hilux and that is the price tag just call the dealer you'll get a discount correct no no I know people who at the first phone call got like a huge discount and then they went there and physically and got an even larger discount so we also I also know that Toyota tried to protect this by sending out pressure saying there are no discounts so we also did call I know somebody who called the dealer right after the press release came saying but they saying that sir please just come we'll talk so we did call the dealer and yes that four five lakhs was being signed off on a call so when you turn up there with money in hand you'll get value pricing for the Hilux after that and in that regard the VROS tops off at 32 lakhs and the Vcross doesn't have as much power as the Hilux which is the one thing that on paper you can see as the big differentiator between the two correct but the thing you can't see on paper and the reason why the BRS has to come into this story is like it's the only other pickup on sale in India right now not not just that but because as an evolution of pickups what to expect from pickups you know we started off with Scorpio pickup right it was No it was the getaway yeah it was the getaway correct it was the Getaway and then we had the Xenon and they were all workhorse workhorse pickups right and I remember when I was testing the Xenon way back then and I was talking to the guys at Tata Motors about the vehicle and they said this is benchmarked to the global standards i said no way right and then that generation of the Fortuna I remember when I drove it I think I first drove it in Thailand or something like that i was like yeah okay I can see it right they were not carlike in the sense they had that gruffness about them but then when I drove the Vcross and I was so taken aback correct because it feels so carlike like I remember telling people that you know young couples like if you want to get one go ahead you know it's not going to feel like a compromise it'll feel like something you can live with and I have friends who have the VROS and they love it they use it every day in the city they use it to travel with correct and it's because of that friendliness of the suspension yeah no it's also the cabin i think Anand's uh the Anand is the person I go to the racetrack to teach with when they moved to the Isuzu there was a lot of like are we making the right decision here because the utility of the Isuzu because he runs a garage parts have to be sent for painting etc was not lost on anyone but the Inova had been this utterly reliable family vehicle right i remember asking Anandabad two years later saying "So how's the Isuzu working out?" He says "Actually dude I'm so relieved it's just like an innova they go into the Isuzu and they don't seem to notice." This is before the Christa they don't seem to notice any lack of amenity or space so we haven't lost anything and we've gained the load bay i think we've made the good move right and even today that isu still there anan's moved on so I think they drive a Tiguan now they used to have a kreta for the longest time to get around Bengaluru with but the Isuzu is still doing the same thing it takes people it takes loads it takes stuff in the load bay to painting and back and all this kind of thing it's still running the same car so I think that balance of lifestyle and utility with that is really sweet and uh I know that they hiked up their prices after the I mean about the time when the Hilux there was a little bit of greed no because it was such a wellpriced car before that it was they have one excuse around there that they also upgraded the engine to go with the BS6 now so they bumped up I mean that would have added to the cost but it went from you remember it used to be like a 17 lakh or something like that car and it went suddenly to 13 and you're like what the hell just happened here bs6 was very expensive let us take the price to Dmax and people our customers are going to be VROS but what the hell it's still queuing up so uh that benchmark of the VORS is in effect an outlier if you think about it yeah it is but it is such a good benchmark and then you wonder that how much of the Hilux's utility is really important to me correct because for sure I mean somebody who really wants to go and abuse their car I mean really use it in that sense the Hilux will give you a lot more peace of mind i'm not saying that the VROS is not going to be No but peace of mind is an intangible it's not a real thing exactly and of course along with that the Toyota network and all of that will be an added convenience to buying the uh Hilux but how much does it matter to you how how important is that uh additional usability of let's say being able to just load it travel with it and do just that i don't know i think most people who are going to buy one of these is going to put a tent out back which is a part of the accessories that Toyota has in their own brochure what we don't know is whether it's road decal or not a lot of people are doing it it's not road legal there's no way no dude you repaint a car in India and if you don't go to the RTU and tell them it is illegal how can you put a house on the back but this is a big movement right now you know how many people are doing this anybody who's getting up as usual with when it becomes a movement you know that the pitch is buggered as it were right you know that there's people who are not genuinely into it they're just like think about it dude if you want to be outside in the wilderness the whole idea is it's you and the wild having a moment together if you've got all the conveniences of your household with you in your in the back of your car you can't even sleep on the ground because you're like sitting on top of the roof of your car and sleeping are you really outside no no i like the idea it's a very cool idea i've seen the friends who have I want to take my building I have I I live in a 18story building i want to put wheels on it and Hilux badges on all sides and then move this building around and if anybody says "Hey it's it's it's a Hilux and it's just got my house on it." You get confused because of the design it's okay because I have uh recently just like I told you with that camping thing that we went for man some of those things were I mean they were the moment was so awesome and so easy to set up it's it has a certain fascination and certainly a experience out of it imagine just being able to travel anywhere no I don't want to I don't want to denigrate the entire lifestyle i'm just saying like with van life you know what van life is right you should look it up it's very hilarious because at the beginning the guys who did the van life thing almost before social media made van life a thing they were genuinely doing the van thing they would live out of their van and they would have a great time and it was a Spartan lifestyle to at the other end of it van life is not Spartan anymore van life is lifestyle and there is a fundamental difference so yesterday I was uh researching something called a swag which is an Australian word for a tent kind of thing which has a mattress and everything built into it and it's like an old bed roll you roll it up wrap it up put it in a bag and load it in your car so your tent effectively just rolls out and it's 90% of the work is done okay 3 minutes to put it up type of thing and I thought this is a great idea if I wanted to go camping and I'm not claustrophobic this seems like a great idea then I saw one of the video where he packs this bag this pack is massive okay the bag itself once rolled up as convenient as it is see it's this big it's this and at that point I'm like this is not convenient to carry around at all this requires a car and what what do you know it is 100% tied to the pickup lifestyle yeah so I'm sure all this stuff is not for motorcycles that is definitely going to go with the car i can't imagine something like that being strapped onto a bike so yeah the I think it'll it's an enabler for those kind of lifestyles and you have options to do things like that and if you're interested it requires a fair bit of figuring stuff out from whatever I've understood from friends because it's bits and pieces you take from this one and get it done from here so it's not easy so you might look at some great setups and think that it's um plug-andplay not always uh not always and I have met some folks now who have extensive setups not in not in Isuzu or in a Hilux one of them was a pagerro but beautifully like he has a kitchen that just slides out and he's out there cooking in the open he's got his own water he's got his own stuff and all of that was kickass i really enjoyed that so that kind of enablement through these pickups and what you modify with them will happen but the legality of all this is a big question mark still yeah i'm just saying look you're welcome to your lifestyle but if you're going to say I'm a minimalist and I have a pickup truck and I have a slide out kitchen and all of that it's not minimalist anymore is it it's not minimalist man why does it have I'm just making a point it's about being out there and I think okay if you want to do all of this great please do it then please do go outside so when we come back to the Hilux now this is a car that is going to be an adjustment even in terms of lifestyle your parking garage has to be big enough keep that in mind it's not a small thing right and then to live with it every day is also going to be a compromise the price tag is something you can easily figure out the rest of it is fairly easy to get used to yeah it's a Toyota so the rest of it will be easy right keeping it servicing it things will not break and all of that stuff efficiency also I was strangely surprised like in the city managing 10 11 with the manual yeah not bad and on the highway it was about 15 yeah i think if you wanted to complete your SUV lifestyle buy a Maruti Espresso the smallest SUV money can buy in the country right now and then you park it in the load bay so then in one parking lot you can have two cars and no none of your neighbors can lay claim to that okay um what else is there to talk about this car uh uh if I were to have only enough money to buy a Hilux and this was my family car would it be a good idea no no i think that's clear because I don't think you'd be happy driving this around every day aside from the size the size is an obvious inconvenience because the turning radius and all the heaviness of the steering the bumpiness of the suspension and today like if you think about it like uh if you just want to make a statement like a Thar Rocks is striking a pretty cool balance of looking the part and being easy enough to drive and easy enough to live with and even that is a compromised car in terms of space at least yeah right but even then it's being able to live with the Tar 3 and I still can't say for the Tar 3 but the rocks you can manage to pull that off got it so apart from the name yeah yeah apart from the name and uh a family car should not have a double X in it you know what I mean hey DA okay so no I can't that I can't think of it has to so this is genuinely like the second or the third or the fourth vehicle in your garage there's no way around this it can't be and again it has to be a utility need otherwise I think you're just you're unnecessarily bothering yourself that's basically it if you had to pick within the Toyota so if you genuinely have a farm and you genuinely c things around and this is the vehicle that you've chosen to do some of that with yeah fair enough it will work and if you wanted a Toyota and you wanted to make a statement you wanted it to be fun to drive something that's easier easy to live with don't get the legend get the legender exactly and that's what I came away from this thinking that as much as I wanted to say that this is the Toyota I want to buy because see as a No the Toyota you want to buy is the Celica WRC okay uh for me it's the LFA it's the LFA lf is not there anymore will come that's a Lexus it's not a Toyota but it's not a Toyota okay uh okay uh FT GT86 ah now you hitting yeah the Gazu Racing Edition GT86 if there is one i don't know if there is one happy thoughts happy thoughts we were talking about it as that we want to underline the idea that this is a lifestyle vehicle in the sense of cannot be your primary it would be very difficult to live with not impossible for everybody but for most of you you will get annoyed with the car eventually if this is your primary and and yeah like uh this to me was like a cooler statement in the Toyota family compared to the Fortuna cuz the Fortuna has a bit of a rep now but I've come away from driving the Hilux and thinking that no if I had to be spending this kind of money I'd go for the Fortuna the problem I think Karthik is that you're driving the stock Hilux and the stock Hilux is just it's the platform then you start doing stuff to it i mean if you don't have a winch and you don't have what ARB suspension and 32 lights so that's actually high lux you know what I mean what's the point i have no interest in any of that after that you go to the GK2 market you switch on all your lights and go through urban civilization looking down on people that is how the Hilux is supposed to work correct correct me if I'm wrong right i mean your card had high lift suspension at least no sir stock i'm a stockist yep i like all my vehicle stock stark you're not in the Isuzu lifestyle in a pickup lifestyle no no i think I'd be very happy with a VRO standard i don't think I'd want to make any modifications to that that would be just fine if you were to buy the Isuzu would you buy the rear wheel drive one or the four-wheel drive one i mean go all in once that's it four-wheel drive yeah makes sense then you can do whatever you want after that we were Yeah we were supposed to be talking about the Hilux but I think we made our point about the Hilux and uh what the summary for yeah please go ahead this is the quick summary for the Toyota Hilux it has taken us 2 years to get to the car because it's been a really busy car and we haven't had a chance to get to it um the Hilux is based on the same platform as the Innova and the Fortuner and the Legender i don't know how many years are there and the top of that is the Hilux this is the largest car to come from that platform it's almost exactly the same as a Fortune under the hood 2.8 L 4-cylinder diesel we drove the manual which has a 420 Newton meter uh tune if you take the automatic which is what I think you should you would get the 500 Newton meter state of tune if you do take the manual there'll be an IMT button on your dashboard it's a good button to press because it basically smoothens your gear changes both going up the gearbox and down the gearbox it is going to make the whole car feel a lot smoother and smoother is a thing that we need to discuss it's not the power training it's the suspension the fundamental thing you have to understand about all pickup trucks on Earth is that they are primarily designed to do a job and that job includes carrying an enormous amount of weight at the back of the car in the load bay in the case of the leg in the case of the Hilux that's 500 kilos and that means the suspension is expected to work when there's that much load sitting that far back in the car and when that load is not there which is how lifestyles work you're not constantly going to carry 500 kilos around this car can feel a little bit bouncy and jittery it's the ladder frame itself and it is also the suspension tune when you drive it in urban streets and you hit a bump here and there this is not going to feel like the most comfortable absorbent car but you might even wonder where is the legend of the Hilux actually coming from it couldn't even do that it's when you hit a lot of those things continuously at slightly higher speeds especially when you're fully loaded that's when you start to understand what this car is about it's a work car not a lifestyle car we are interpreting it as a lifestyle car which will immediately cause compromises in your comfort remember this this is the core of the story now if you were to drive around with your friends or family the cabin itself is actually okay the AC works it's reasonably quiet it's a Toyota cabin and Toyota really doesn't know how to do luxury until a Lexus badge enters the picture so when you see it it is a utilitarian cabin everything will work everything will make sense but will you feel like "Oh what an expensive car." No that's not going to happen this is more or less the same as a Fortune the Fortune was not a great starting point on this particular front anyway but you have great seats and at least for short durations even for extremely tall passengers the cabin is not going to feel super cramped it's good enough the cabin is black i've seen the cabin we didn't mention it the cabin is black so it does look a little bit more uh closed in than it actually is and I think if there were a lighter colored interior trim it might actually help this car feel a little bit more spacious apart from that there's a generous load bay i know this because at the racetrack two or three people use Hiluxes now many other people have used uh Isuzu before to load bikes on it these are not long enough for a bike to go in lengthways they have to leave the tailgate open sometimes reinforce the tailgate hinges so that the extra weight can be accounted for but it works in that format and I suspect that when you put that kind of load in the back where there's two bikes weighing about 400 kilos suddenly the car seems to settle down and make sense so this will make a pretty decent highway car it'll settle down it'll do long distances engine at 100 kmp is doing just 1500 RPM it just feels completely relaxed but because it's so large you don't have to do the creta thing of flashing people to get out of the way they just see this enormous thing coming in the rearview mirror and they just move out and it's a very peaceful car to drive in that sense in most situations flip side when you go into urban traffic this is a very large and long car the sides are more or less straight you'll get used to that pretty rapidly the length I believe you will get used to but will it be convenient to drive in relatively heavy traffic it's a pickup truck and it's a large one so by our standards a large one so it's not going to do such a great job of it apart from that it's a Toyota which means once you buy it your basic job is over now you get it serviced regularly replace whatever parts wear out as they wear out and life just goes on peacefully karthik's point is very simple this is a pickup truck which in India is a lifestyle thing but as a design is a workhorse thing there's a gap in the middle watch for the gap this may not be the ideal choice for your primary vehicle this might be something that you will add to your garage as a second third fourth option as you're expressing yourself in terms of I love cars and I'd like to see what kind of cars I love but as a primary car this is not going to be easy to live with what Karthik's point is if you wanted to use a pickup truck as your primary then look at the Isuzu instead the Vcross is a far more natural pickup in that lifestyle it's a little bit more comfortable yes a little less powerful also but it's a more comfortable car by default so it'll fit into your lifestyle a little bit more naturally than the Hilux would does it have the same kind of reliability as a Toyota anecdotally yes but does it have the same aura of reliability that Toyotaas generally do obviously not super uh minor things feature wise Fortuna gets metally red seats this does not um that kind of stuff uh has drum brakes at the rear it doesn't matter it's a Toyota still work exactly it's meant to work with the higher loads at the rear okay so in summary that was what we wanted to discuss about the Toyota Hilux uh there is a new black edition if you're interested it has a lot less chrome and that might actually be a good idea because I think there's way too much chrome but actually it's interesting that we're talking the Hilux now why because we might we I think we are going to be at the end of the Hilux of this generation we got it in 2022 but this Hilux has been around for for a long time yeah very long time correct very very long time all Hiluxes have been around for a long time if you know what I mean this is globally what is the eighth generation and if I'm not wrong it was it's been over 10 years or so since this thing has been around I'll put the exact date out but it's been I was looking up because I realized that because I hadn't driven it I' really not looked into it so maybe that now is a good time to buy this Hilux because the discounts are available like we've already discussed uh it's approaching the end of its life and the next Hilux odds are it's going to be even larger to drive because we know the new fortune is coming which is on the which which will be a new generation which will not be dramatically different which is safe to assume that there will be of course a new generation Hilux as well this Hilux is about to is likely to get even larger so if you want a reasonably sized pickup rather than an enormously large pickup then maybe now is a good time to pick up a Hilux all righty then if you have any more questions please do leave us a comment anywhere you like is fine the app works best for us because we can track your comments a little bit better there uh but that aside this is the Hilux and tell us what you'd like to see more of on motoring first before we go what else is coming for cars karthik cars um we not much actually uh we are the world's what second third largest car market how can I going slow right now so I think uh the only one that I have got an invite for right now is the Skoda Kodiak okay that's the one that's going to come uh that's happening sometime in April first half of April so we'll be driving that there will be the Tiguan that will come the R line tiguan big big big one sorry yeah RL and they have also announced the RL oh R line okay and they have also announced the Golf GTI m uh which will also be coming which will be like 50 lakh rupees yeah i mean it's 50 lakhs might be a bit much okay 49 so something will be there so that is also going to happen but are we going to drive the Golf i have no idea right now i do know that the Kodiak we've all you know what GTS stands for right go to India anyways yeah so golf is coming um and we will have I mean there's lots more that's going to come but nothing as of now but what about the Espresso 4x4 that's the one I want to buy the little SUV that could specifically show you'll have to drive it around okay the only car I'm willing to drive is the Espresso 4x4 okay yeah so I mean cars I think we'll see action only post I mean from April onwards yeah there's uh and interestingly it's a whole bunch of EVs coming our way but when they're coming right now we don't have a clear lock on dates got it but it'll keep coming there's lots like I think the first few that we do know and there's a clear timeline to it will be the current update the current facelift and the current EV which will come close by so that will be April May what is the current EV likely to be called i don't know karines I which is a handling term so I'm actually the only thing that I thought about was the Karin's update which is not going to be really an update they're looking to bring in a higher spec of the currents so I I've been going on thinking of it as the current limousine like how they the carnival limousine and I think that's a solid opportunity they could really really do a kick-ass job of that so let's see all right mhm are we done yes sir thank you so much for watching this is Motoring First and we'll come back to you with some other car or bike very very soon