WAIMEA, Hawaii — As the worldwide on-line reveal of the redesigned 2024 Toyota Tacoma wound down at a complicated seaside tropical island resort right here, after the fireplace dancers had departed the volcano-themed stage, Kevin Hunter sat alone, practically unnoticed, within the driver’s seat of a white Tacoma with the door open.

For a couple of minutes, whereas journalists and visitors simply ft away largely ignored him, the president of Toyota Motor North America’s Calty design studio let his arms glide throughout the a lot improved inside contours of what’s simply one in every of Toyota’s most necessary merchandise.

His design groups in California and Michigan had been engaged on the Tacoma for greater than three years, and this was an early alternative to the touch and really feel what had beforehand existed solely in a digital world. He wasn’t going to let the second go, particularly given the scope of a venture that not solely affected Toyota’s third-bestselling nameplate in the US, however its entire body-on-frame lineup.

The 2024 Tacoma, revealed right here Could 19, is the third of 4 Toyota vans to maneuver onto the automaker’s world F1 body-on-frame platform, following the Tundra full-size pickup in 2021 and Sequoia full-size SUV in 2022. However the Tacoma is the undisputed king of what Toyota calls its “4 Brothers,” outselling the 2 full-sizers and the Tacoma-based 4Runner SUV mixed final 12 months, and their sequential redesign onto a brand new platform — the redesigned 4Runner is available in 2024 — is a primary.

“Once we began engaged on Tundra, we knew Tacoma was coming. It was an ideal alternative for us to kind of simply reset all the pieces,” Hunter informed Automotive Information. “We have actually by no means been capable of design the North American vans in sequence like that with an all new platform collectively. So we thought, it is a nice alternative to take a look at our household id — our North American truck DNA — and what we would like it to be.”

When the Tacoma begins arriving at North American dealerships this 12 months, it can share distinct styling cues and options with the bigger Tundra, together with a four-cylinder-based model of the Tundra’s non-obligatory i-Pressure Max hybrid powertrain. The similarities are purposeful, Hunter mentioned.

“Tundra set the tone for that within the form language and within the style. The sorts of kinds that we’re utilizing. We coined the time period ‘interlocking shapes’ — interlocking symbolizes power — and we wished that to return throughout within the vans,” he mentioned, “in order that when any individual appears at it, basically it appears robust. It’s robust and it appears robust. Every little thing we did was actually from the viewpoint of its functionality, which was going to be nice.”

Toyota model head David Christ mentioned vendor enter was instrumental in serving to craft the redesigned Tacoma, via the product council of the Toyota Nationwide Sellers Advisory Council.

“Sellers have been very concerned, and we have now product counsel that we use to get suggestions on our product selections,” Christ mentioned. “These sellers … should not solely nice automobile sellers but additionally have a information and a ardour about product. So we included them within the strategy of creating and engineering the truck, and we expect we hit on all the asks for the phase.”

A type of asks from sellers and prospects, Hunter mentioned, was for a elementary change within the cabin.

Hunter mentioned in buyer and vendor suggestions from the third-generation Tacoma, “one of many key areas we checked out was the seating place; the hip-to-heel of that truck was … a little bit bit missing. When you have been a tall man moving into that truck and utilizing it, it offered a number of challenges, so we actually wished to repair that downside and get a correct seating place.”

Hunter mentioned designers raised the seating place, which required lifting the roofline barely to provide the Tacoma sufficient headroom.

“Entry/egress needs to be straightforward on a truck,” Hunter mentioned. “It should not be a laborious job to get out and in of your truck, so we actually wished to only make it very straightforward to make use of — handy, easy.

“They weren’t searching for a brand new truck/automobile, or a brand new idea of a truck,” Hunter mentioned of vendor asks within the design part. “As a substitute, they mentioned, ‘Give me a rugged truck; that is what I want.’ So we actually, actually took that to coronary heart.”

Hunter mentioned the brand new Tacoma is a “pure play, utility off-road, rugged product,” derived from the earlier era, “however we needed to modernize it so it felt like a brand new product.”

As a result of the Tacoma is unique to North America, Hunter mentioned designers did not have to fret about limitations from different markets.

“Let’s take a look at who our buyer is, and direct [the design] squarely at them,” he mentioned, differentiating it from the Toyota Hilux, a compact pickup offered in the remainder of the world. “You’ll be able to’t get too rugged with the design of the Tacoma, so we actually took that to coronary heart. However the Hilux is a distinct truck in a distinct market, and it has completely different wants.”