Hardcore Top Gear fans will remember that in 2003, Jeremy Clarkson tried to kill an old Toyota Hilux by subjecting it to ever harsher punishments, famously failing to do so. Twenty-three years later, Toyota UK has paid homage to one of the stunts by updating it, swapping out the little red fourth-gen for a brand-new ninth-gen EV to showcase its robustness.
The company decided to scope out Reddit to decide which test to recreate – repeatedly hitting the pick-up truck with a one-tonne wrecking ball or dropping a caravan on it. It says it received hundreds of responses that overwhelmingly chose the latter.
With that settled, the Hilux was brought to the Bentwaters airfield in Suffolk, where a caravan was craned nine metres up and dropped directly on top of it. The truck suffered only a cracked windscreen, a dented roof and a misshapen bed, and once engineers made sure it was safe, it powered on immediately and drove off without an issue.
