Smaller Tacoma or bigger Hilux?

Despite the local bakkie market beingmore diverse and abundant in its offering than ever before, South Africans still look with jealousy upon America.

The world’s largest bakkie market has even more choice, but South African buyers could finally get their wish and have more ‘American’ bakkies available in the future,locally.

Does this mean that bakkies like Toyota’s Tacoma might finally be sold alongside Hilux, here? Not quite. The outcome of radical consolidation in the automotive world could mean more bakkie platform twins in future.

As the burden of hybridization and electrification costs rise, manufacturers are struggling to justify multiple platforms. For decades, VW proved what could be done in the passenger car market with shared platforms – and that logic is now starting to ring true for bakkies.

A bakkie’s ladder frame design makes platform convergence much simpler, but enormous demand and ease of supply have never triggered an issue or the need to share. Until now.

A combination of the chip crisis and huge R&D costs in other product lines are finally starting to impact bakkies. A new generation of American bakkie buyers (younger and more urban) is showing less resistance to smaller ‘global’ double-cab bakkies.

The result is that Toyota could be rethinking its Tacoma and Hilux platform integration. Unconfirmed reports from America indicate that the next-generation Tacoma and Hilux could share a common platform.

This would enable massive scaling of resources for Hilux, which is essentially the world’s most successful ‘global’ bakkie. The benefits for South African customers could be huge, with more diverse engines, longer wheelbase options and all manner of comfort and convenience features.

American bakkie customers are very demanding. And there are so many of them that product planners cannot ignore their preferences. A common Tacoma/Hilux platform could possibly deliver more powerful engines, greater towing capacity and better infotainment for future generations of Hilux.

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