But this is not one of those silly Chinese mini trucks you might have seen on YouTube. It’s built from the same platform as the proper Hilux. So how did Toyota do it? Most obviously it’s incredibly basic in terms of luxury and convenience features, short of everything that isn’t absolutely essential. But as the truck’s chief engineer, Dr. Jurachart Jongusuk, explained to Road & Track, there’s more to it than that.
Because Toyota admits it supplies the truck in a partially finished state, leaving the buyer to complete the job. Dr. Jongusuk says the Champ is delivered “70 percent finished, with the remaining 30 percent customized by the customer.”
That doesn’t mean owners are going to have to spend endless weekends routing around in junkyards looking for second-hand steering racks as if they’re building some kind of Cobra-clone kit car. But what they’re buying is a fully drivable truck that’s ready to be customized to suit their life and business needs. Some buyers might need a basic cargo box to haul building materials, while others might need their Champ kitted out as a food truck. And Toyota is primed to put buyers in touch with specialist shops who can make that happen.
But even that strategy wasn’t going to be enough to really bring the price down, so Toyota’s engineers visited the plants of their parts suppliers to study how they could improve productivity and reduce costs. One of the strange results of this process was the decision to paint the inner and outer parts of the rear leaf spring shackles in different colors.
Sadly for American fans of masochistically spartan commercial vehicles, the Hilux Champ was conceived for countries like Thailand, and won’t be making its way to the U.S. any time soon.
