Toyota to recreate ‘Indestructible HiLux' Top Gear test with new ute
The Toyota’s HiLux’s reputation for toughness was put to the test by Top Gear back in 2003, and now Toyota wants to replicate it with the electric HiLux BEV.
There is arguably no Top Gear film which has stood the test of time as well as the ‘The Indestructible HiLux’ feature, in which the tough ute was put through hell only to drive out the other side.
In 2003, Top Gear host Jeremy Clarkson subjected a mid-1980s HiLux to a series of punishing tests, such as crashing it into a tree, parking it in the ocean and dropping a caravan on it, among many others.
The HiLux survived all of his tests – as well as being strapped to the top of a demolishing housing block by James May – giving it the title of the Indestructible HiLux, becoming a permanent fixture of Top Gear’s filming studio until 2015.
Now, 23 years on from when the film aired, Toyota’s UK division has teased it will replicate one aspect of the tests, revealed in a video uploaded to social media.
A red Toyota HiLux appears in frame as an almost identical version of the car Clarkson started out with, before a new electric HiLux BEV enters – just as the camera shows a caravan dangling upside down above it.
The full video is said to be “Dropping Soon”, meaning it likely won’t be long until we see whether the electric HiLux can withstand a caravan falling on it in the same way as its 40-year-old predecessor.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, commenters have called for more thorough testing of the HiLux BEV, including leaving it in the sea for hours – something Toyota is unlikely to do given the impact the salty water will have on its lithium-ion battery.
