“They weren’t looking for a new truck/car, or a new concept of a truck,” Hunter said of dealer asks in the design phase. “Instead, they said, ‘Give me a rugged truck; that’s what I need.’ So we really, really took that to heart.”
Hunter said the new Tacoma is a “pure play, utility off-road, rugged product,” derived from the previous generation, “but we had to modernize it so it felt like a new product.”
Because the Tacoma is exclusive to North America, Hunter said designers didn’t have to worry about limitations from other markets.
“Let’s look at who our customer is, and direct [the design] squarely at them,” he said, differentiating it from the Toyota Hilux, a compact pickup sold in the rest of the world. “You can’t get too rugged with the design of the Tacoma, so we really took that to heart. But the Hilux is a different truck in a different market, and it has different needs.”
