The Hilux Surf line of vehicles made by Toyota is predominantly classed as off road transportation. First introduced in 1984 into Toyota’s line up, they decided to not build the vehicle from the ground up as an entirely new model but rather took an existing model, the Hilux, and made modifications to it.

First generation of the model produced from 1984-1989
This first incarnation of the model was mechanically identical to the Toyota Hilux pickup. Toyota simply added a removable fibreglass top to it to change it into a Hilux Surf. All models had two doors and were identical from the dashboard forward to the Hilux. Almost all of the changes to make it a Hilux Surf were done to the rear half of the vehicle. Rear springs were downgraded from the Hilux pickup model and contained one less leaf. This resulted in problems later as with the addition of rear seats and the fibreglass top the rear leafs tended to sag over time.

1986 saw the model undergo some serious front suspension design changes. The solid front axle previously used was changed over to an independent front suspension setup. This allowed the model to be more driveable at highway speeds and also created more room in the engine bay allowing the use of larger engines in future models. While this change did have an impact on the off road capabilities of the vehicle the solid front axle was retained on the Hilux pickup models. Read the rest of this entry »