Digging deeper into its glorious history, Toyota introduced spiritual successors to the Toyota camper trucks of the 1970s and 1980s. The new Tacozilla combines the sturdy and durable Tacoma TRD Sport pickup chassis and a customized "micro house" into a stunning small 4x4 mini RV that is precise and flexible on trails and spacious and livable at night. This may just be a one-off SEMA, but if the world needs a camper that can go "anywhere on this planet" and look good at the same time, then now is the time.
Just a few months ago, the land startup TruckHouse launched the Toyota Sunrader Revival, which is a state-of-the-art Tacoma camping truck with gorgeous interiors. Although we admire the company's work, the $325,000 full-loaded carbon fiber masterpiece is not entirely suitable for simple, nostalgic off-road truck camper molds.
Tacozilla is great for molds, thanks to its exquisite vintage golden tan/orange/bronze striped paint job, of course, in fact, Toyota doesn’t actually have to create a viable price point for SEMA-off, let’s imagine wandering to the local area At the Toyota dealership, pick a basic model of a Spartan, which is nothing but a well-equipped Tacoma pickup.
Tacozilla was not inspired by Sunrader, but by the Chinook, another Toyota miniature RV that has been loved for decades. According to Tin Can Tourists, in 1973, in the context of the imminent U.S. oil crisis, Toyota and Chinook collaborated to develop their first small and efficient fiberglass mini RV based on Hilux pickup trucks. A far cry from TruckHouse’s $325,000, the retail price of the first Toyota-Chinook model is less than $5,000, and the price in 2021 is less than $31,000. In fact, the advertisements at the time encouraged buyers to "buy an economy car; get a camper van for free."
Toyota's high hardtop Tacozilla seems to be most affected by Chinook Newport/Omega, following the early popular models. In addition to a similar roof, Tacozilla also shares a sloped sidewall design with Newport and Omega campers.
Toyota's Tacozilla team started using Tacoma TRD Sport Access Cab. The idea is never to simply slide the camper into the bed or fix the camper to the exposed chassis, but to create an off-road mini RV that can handle the same types of trails as the Tacoma TRD Sport handles. It must also be cool and gorgeous enough to cause a sensation in a show dedicated to heinous car art.
“Our goal is to make a vehicle that is designed correctly but looks very cool,” explains Marty Schwerter, project manager and director of operations at Toyota Motorsport Technology Center. "I've been around the car all my life. The car looks cool. I also want the camper to look cool."
After sketching out the design and removing Tacoma's bed, Schwerter and the team began to frame the camper with square tubes. Without the ambition of "looks cool", life would be easier, but the team developed a design with rounded edges and multi-planar side walls that form a certain angle with the crease on the edge of the lower window of the truck cab. Like Newport.
This angled wall design proved a special challenge at the back end, where the team invested more than 100 hours of labor to create a one-piece door that was precisely installed in the frame and opened and closed easily (Chinook avoided This question is a two-piece split side door).
When it was time to complete the aluminum body, Toyota contacted Texas-based Complete Customs, which sprinkled the gorgeous multi-color vintage gloss and helped assemble and specify the interior. Here, Toyota squeezed into a compact but powerful floor plan, starting from the doorway, the kitchen and the fully enclosed wet bathroom are facing each other. The bathroom has a toilet and hot/cold shower, while the kitchen has a familiar stove, sink and fridge/freezer combination.
Going further afield, Tacozilla campers invited R&R to rest in the double bench dining room, where there is a gorgeous 3D printed table that doubles as a backlit wall art. This is a cool little feature, but it reminds us of the sad reality that this is just a one-time display camper-if it were a product, the table would double as a sleeping surface, not an artwork. Ensure that the double cab Tacozilla can be used as a family campervan. On the contrary, Tacozilla is a dedicated two-bedroom bed with multifunctional desktop art.
The Tacozilla bed is located in an alcove, where campers can see the wall-mounted TV they watched in the lounge. However, if it is a clear night, they will want to turn off the TV and turn their attention to the star performance in the 4 x 4 ft (1.2 x 1.2 m) skylight centered on the ceiling.
The Tacozilla team did not spend too much extra effort to overhaul Tacoma itself, adding some moderate upgrade lists, such as TRD snorkel, front winch, 2-inch suspension lift and TRD billet upper control arm, General Grabber X3 285/70/17 tires And rigid auxiliary lighting. Driving power comes from Tacoma's 278-horsepower 3.5-liter V6 and a six-speed manual transmission. The dual-battery setup under the hood ensures sufficient power for vehicles, camping equipment and additional lighting.
Undoubtedly, this time SEMA will not follow the historical footprint of the original Toyota Chinook, but we are sure that many SEMA show visitors and followers hope so. Motorhomes and land travel have been very popular before the pandemic, and now this popularity has risen to the height of fanaticism, and motorhomes of various styles and sizes are coveted commodities. The neatly integrated 4x4 camper built on the most popular land truck in the United States is purchased at an attractive price and marked with Toyota's reliability, and observe its out-of-stock situation in the next few years.
For a closer look at the build process and some of these decisions, check out the four-part Tacozilla series on the Toyota US YouTube channel. Part 1 is as follows.