The Toyota Hilux Black Rally Edition is a TRD Truck Done Right

TopSpeed

By Robert Moore

Published Dec 29, 2018

It’s aimed at Japan, but we want it in the States too!

The 2019 Tokyo Auto Salon is coming up quick, so you know it’s a guarantee that Toyota would show up with something outrageous wearing a TRD badge. And, it is, in the form of the Prius TRD, but we’ll leave that for another conversation. Instead, I want to tell you about the Toyota Hilux Black Rally Edition that has TRD written, literally, all over it.

The 2019 Toyota Hilux Black Rally Edition

Since the Hilux Black Rally Edition won’t make its official auto show debut for a bit longer, so we don’t know everything there is to know. From what we can see in these pictures, however, it’s bound to be one hell of a truck. Naturally, the first thing you’ll notice is the TRD branding. It’s literally everywhere from the front grille to the front skid plate to the rear quarter panels and license plate holders. Naturally, the Hilux sits a little higher than normal and rides on a set of black alloy, double-spoke wheels. There’s even a red gas cap and chromed out dual exhaust.

As you know, the Hilux isn’t sold in the United States at the moment. The only choices we have for a Toyota-branded truck is the Toyota Tundra and the Toyota Tacoma. We would love to have the Hilux, however, and one in TRD form too. As a TRD, one would expect the Black Rally Edition to have a rather powerful engine under the hood. After all, this is TRD we’re talking about, and this thing is meant to rally off-road, right? Well, unless TRD did anything special under the hood, don’t expect much in the name of performance.

Of all the engines available for the Hilux, none of them are particularly impressive. The base engine is a 2.7-liter gasoline drinker with just 164 horsepower and 181 pound-feet of torque. That’s not going to cut it, right? There is a 2.4-liter turbodiesel, but it only delivers 146 horsepower and 253 pound-feet of torque. And, since this is aimed at off-roading, that 310 pound-foot figure might just be good enough. Of course, we won’t know for sure what’s happening under the metal until the Black Rally Edition shows up at the 2019 Tokyo Auto Show, but here’s to hoping.

As one final note, I also wouldn’t expect to see too much done to the interior of this concept either. It may be dressed up with TRD floormats, TRD embordering on the seats, and maybe even TRD-branded door sill panels. With any luck, it’ll even feature special TRD graphics programmed to the infotainment system, but don’t get overly excited as we’re really not expecting that to happen. It’s within the realm of possibility, but it’s not exactly plausible either. You will get to see the Hilux Black Rally Edition sit next to the aforementioned Prius TRD and the GR Supra Super GT that will offer up a glimpse at what we can expect from the GT-Spec Supra race car in the very near future. We’ll see the road-going Supra at the 2019 Detroit Auto Show in just a couple of weeks, so stay tuned for that as well.

The 2019 Toyota Hilux Black Rally Edition

Further reading