12/06/2026
Double Cab SRX 4×4 - R170 000excl.vat
Stop. Before you type another word about how the looks like something that rolled off a production line in China, I need you to do something radical.
Go to your nearest Toyota SA dealer. Walk inside. Stand in front of one. Actually look at it.
Because photographs are lying to you.
This is not a new phenomenon. The camera has been misrepresenting cars since the very first press shot was taken.
Proportions get flattened. Surfaces lose their depth. Creases that catch afternoon light beautifully on a showroom floor become indistinguishable grey lines on your phone screen.
The new Hilux is a particular victim of this, because its front end - that wide, honeycomb grille, that bold "TOYOTA" lettering hammered across the nose - needs three dimensions to make its case. In photos, it reads as busy. In the metal, it reads as authoritative.
Go see it. Then drive it.
And while you're standing there feeling slightly embarrassed about your hot take, remember that this bakkie has been absorbing criticism since 1969. Every generation. Without fail.
The Hilux has never looked like anything else in the segment - it has always done its own thing, worn its own face, and refused to follow whatever everyone else was doing. That's not a bug. That's the whole point.
And thanks to its futuristic styling, you would never mistake this thing for anything other than a Hilux. From fifty metres away, in a crowded parking lot, in your rear-view mirror - it's unmistakable. Toyota nailed that.
People hated the eighth-gen's face too. And the seventh's. There is a letter somewhere - handwritten, probably angry - complaining about whichever Hilux was new in 1978. The internet just gives us the same argument at a higher volume and lower consequence.
And here's what history tells us every single time: it always becomes an icon. Always. The generation everyone said looked wrong is inevitably the one that ends up on a poster, the one that gets restored, the one that people look back on and wonder what all the fuss was about. This generation will be no different.
Remember the ? The outrage was operatic. Those nostrils, that face, the sheer audacity of it. Today, it's one of the most celebrated performance cars on the planet. Give the Hilux the same grace you eventually gave that.
It isn't as though Toyota is making random decisions in a dark room. This face, these surfaces, this attitude - it's the same thread running through the Corolla Cross and the RAV4. Deliberate. Considered. A house style, not a crisis.
And the rest of the package remains exactly what made South Africa fall in love with this thing in the first place: the proven 2.8-litre GD-6 turbodiesel, unchanged at 150 kW and 500 Nm, mated to a six-speed automatic, with 48V mild-hybrid technology on Legend derivatives.
In 2025, the shifted 36 525 units locally, topping the bakkie sales charts and cementing Toyota's grip on the South African market in the process. Year after year. Generation after generation. The critics write their pieces, and the buyers write their cheques, and the cheques always win.
Fifty-seven years. Nine generations. Endless criticism. The Hilux is still here, still selling, and still doesn't give a damn. Get to a dealership and see it for yourself - because the internet clearly can't be trusted with this one.
