The name may sound familiar, as Toyota rolled out a Trailhunter Concept truck at last year's Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) show. The only official information on the Tacoma Trailhunter is that it will "build upon Toyota's legendary off-road and overlanding credibility with purpose-built engineering and robust components," as explained in the press release. But, we can take some educated guesses based on the Trailhunter Concept.
That Tundra-based show truck featured a Trailhunter-specific suspensions setup, skid plates, and a slew of accessories like a roof rack, bed rack, fridge, and roof tent. The idea, Toyota said, was to offer an upgrade-ready truck from the dealer alongside a slew of dealer-sold overlanding accessories. So instead of Tacoma buyers buying a TRD Pro and spending $10,000 on aftermarket gear elsewhere, Toyota's plan is to sell as much of it in-house as possible.
The teaser shows one of the partners that Toyota has on board: Australian off-road accessory giant ARB. The company is Australia's largest manufacturer and distributor of off-road parts, with a massive catalog that includes air lockers, fridges, roof racks, and bumpers. Its gear has a fantastic reputation in the overland community and, based on this teaser, it looks like Toyota will offer the Tacoma Trailhunter with an ARB rear bumper featuring an exposed recovery point. We don't know whether that'll be installed at the factory or part of Toyota's dealer catalog, but either way, a partnership with ARB should give Toyota the ability to sell plenty of top-end overlanding kit at its dealers.
To haul all of that gear, Toyota said a key focus of the Trailhunter line would be "load-bearing capability," in addition to off-road capability and on-trail protection. The company hasn't fully explained what that increased load-bearing capability will entail, but a key limiting factor on the current Tacoma is its relatively paltry payload capacity (1155 lbs for a crew cab 4x4, the most popular configuration). Now that the Tacoma is moving to a new platform, we're hoping it'll finally have the hauling capacity to support long overland journeys with all-stock components.
Source: Roadandtrack
