Toyota Hilux pickup - Reliability & safety
The Toyota Hilux has an enviable reputation for reliability, while all models get plenty of safety equipment
A famous television motoring show once subjected an ageing Toyota Hilux to a host of hardships, including being set on fire, washed out to sea and blown up during the demolition of a high-rise building, after which it continued to function. While these feats may have been carried out with entertainment in mind (and we don’t recommend attempting them yourself) the point being made was clear: the Hilux is built tough.
Toyota Hilux reliability
While it represents a drop from previous years, Toyota’s 12th-place finish in our 2023 Driver Power customer satisfaction survey puts it ahead of plenty of other mainstream brands, and while the Hilux itself didn’t appear in the car list, several of the brand’s cars placed in the top half of the 75 models represented. Reliability has long been a strong point for Toyota, so this should carry over to the Hilux.
Safety
Every version of the facelifted Hilux is fitted with the 'Toyota Safety Sense' safety suite, which helped it earn a five-star rating when it was crash-tested by Euro NCAP in 2016. Overall, the Hilux scored 93% for adult occupant protection and 82% for child occupant protection. Pedestrian safety was rated at 83% with the car’s suite of safety assistance systems scoring 63% overall.
All models feature seven airbags, seats designed to minimise whiplash in the event of a collision, traction control, stability control, hill-start assistance (to prevent rollbacks when stopping on hills) and trailer sway control, which automatically takes curative action if it detects a towed trailer ‘fishtailing’ from side to side.
Icon models and above get ‘Downhill Assist Control’, which helps prevent the Hilux from sliding during slippery descents, while the Toyota Safety Sense pack is standard on the Invincible and Invincible X models. This includes autonomous emergency braking, a lane-departure warning system and a road-sign recognition feature, which ‘reads’ speed-limit signs and the like, relaying them digitally on a dashboard screen.
