Toyota’s trucks have a legendary reputation for ruggedness and reliability. Years ago, Top Gear taught us that a Toyota will keep on running after the most harrowing treatment, whether drowned in the ocean or dropped from an exploding tower block. Or in the case of one truck in Los Angeles—melted in an all-consuming wildfire.
The news coming out of Los Angeles has been harrowing in the past week. Fires have raged across the county, with emergency services fighting around the clock to save lives and limit the damage. Unfavorable conditions have sadly seen entire neighborhoods destroyed, with many losing their homes, their cars, and all their worldly possessions to boot.
Local resident Brandon Sanders knows that pain better than most. “On Thursday we confirmed that we lost our house and everything in it to the Eaton Fire,” he shared after returning to the scorched earth that was formerly his home. Amidst the rubble and ash, though, there was a survivor standing tall—Brandon’s 2013 Toyota Tacoma.
“I was surprised to see that the truck was standing at all and not a burned-out wreck,” Brandon told me on Sunday night. “It was parked right up against some bushes in the front so I thought that it would be a total loss for sure.” Despite the Eaton Fire torching over 14,000 acres, including Brandon’s entire home, somehow, the Toyota was able to hold fast.
“When we went back in the day after the fire we were surprised to find it still standing, but we didn’t have the keys—they were burned in the fire,” Brandon explains. “The exterior plastic was clearly badly melted, but we were able to pop the hood and see that the radiator and everything behind it looked okay, so we figured we’d have a key made and give it a shot.”
Thankfully, a helpful dealer was able to sort this out.
“Envision Toyota of West Covina made me a key free of charge from the VIN,” says Brandon. “I got back to the truck yesterday, put the key in the cylinder, and it fired right up.”
Post-fire, the truck is looking a little worse for wear. The whole front bumper is missing, with only melted fragments remaining. The headlight lenses are scorched and deformed, and the original grill was clearly liquified at some point, with the Toyota badge having sagged down to the bottom of the opening. While the front of the truck saw the worst of it, the rest of the body was filthy and deformed from the heat, too. Fender flares have bubbled up, and the taillights show some damage from the intense heat.
Amazingly, despite the high heat that liquified much of the front end, the truck is pretty much fully functional. “Right now, it is 100% driveable,” Brandon explains. “Everything works, even the headlights and blinkers” Obviously, it’s no longer in showroom condition, but he’s not necessarily in a rush to change that. “I haven’t decided if I’m going to have it repaired right away,” says Brandon. “We lost our home in the fire so having an additional working vehicle is a great asset so I may just leave it as is at least for a while.”
In any case, the post-apocalyptic aesthetic proved popular when he shared photos of the truck online. “Folks on Reddit, Facebook, and Instagram seem to be in favor of leaving it as is indefinitely as it looks very ‘badass,'” he says.
There’s no question as to the devastation that tore through Altadena as the Eaton Fire raged. Crews are still working to contain the blaze, along with several others still burning throughout Los Angeles County. The sheer impact of the fire is readily visible in Brandon’s own video below, which clearly shows the bare rubble left behind after the flames tore through the neighborhood. It also shows his Tacoma firing up at the first turn of the key.
It’s wild to think that the Tacoma was able to suffer such heat and survive. Conditions were hot enough to melt the front bumper into a puddle, and yet the engine bay remained largely unscathed. Similarly, the taillights started to melt, but the tires survived intact. The upshot of this is that Brandon has a reliable truck to get around in as he and the neighborhood work through the aftermath of the harrowing fire.
What was once a simple Toyota Tacoma is now an eye-catching relic of one of Los Angeles’ most harrowing weeks.
Note: If you’d like to help, here are a few places you can donate:
Tacoma Dali edition
That shiny Toyota badge stubbornly clinging to the melted remnants of the grille is such a graphic representation of toughness. I hope Toyota makes the best of the goodwill marketing opportunity falling on their laps here by offering this person a brand new truck and putting this one on display somewhere. Or just pay for the repairs, if the owners wish to keep this one.
Say hello to the new commanding warlord of the People’s Republic of Al-Tadena.
That truck is barely singed – No more damage than if it had been parked next to a campfire.
There are a few houses that have survived out there too – including the house of the guy with the Insta page of him driving his vintage Mercedes-Benz 300SD and Volvo P1800 around LA. The P1800 died in the detached garage where it was parked.
Yeah, I don’t get how this adds to the Toyota reliability circle jerk. Just about any car parked there would have likely fared exactly the same.
It’s just a postive story in a time of tragedy. Don’t over think it
True, Toyota fans love to boast about their vehicle superiority, but frankly I found an exception to your case:
I remember reading in an article Autoevolution or some other website and supposedly there was a GMC Sierra Denali that was charred completely (the garage it was in burned down). But lo and behold, when they turned the ignition, it actually fired right up without issues…I was impressed.
Aren’t new Lexus SUVs melting from being in the sun now? This thing looks like it got a quick flame front pass by really quick, enough to melt the plastic, but not long enough to set anything important on fire.
lexus’s are not melting from the sun.
https://www.thedrive.com/news/lexus-gx-owners-report-their-shiny-new-suvs-are-melting-in-the-sun
this isnt from direct sunlight. the sunlight is being amplified by something and causing and issue that would appear on any vehicle
This is better built than ANY of the newer models so…
If it were an MY24, I would be doubly impressed. But given its long list of issues…I doubt it even compares to this 2013…
My mother in law lives in a community in southern BC that was hit by a wildfire in 2015 – her place was spared thankfully, but came really close to being lost. Anyway, her friends down the hill were not so lucky, and had their house burned to the ground. They had a classic 1990 toyota pickup parked there too that got torched also and they offered it to us for free. The exterior plastic had all melted (mostly door handles), and the keys were buried somewhere in the ruins of the house, but I pulled out my collection of supra keys and found one that worked, and with a boost we got it to fire up without too much trouble. We put some new tires on it and she drove it for several years after that without much trouble. I think a flex fuel line off the tank failed shortly after, but was an easy fix. Bottom line is Toyota makes a good fire truck
Old ones? Sure, absolutely.
The only modern ones that might be able to survive fires would be Hiluxes (depending on the engine) and the LC70, but also the Izuzu D max.
I wondered if we’d get another toasted marshmallow Toyota, like the Tundra from however long ago that was mentioned in a few comments already, and here’s my answer.
Good on the Toyota dealer for getting them a replacement key at no cost, the last thing anyone needs over there right now is more expenses.
Knee jerk: How is the wiring insulation up there? Is it a matter of time until a bunch of electrons gang up to finish the job?
Interesting that the rubber parts (tires and rear bumper step pads) did so well.
It’s fun to see older (or some not so old) Toyota trucks live up to their well-deserved reputation. However, I am afraid that this is the end of the line for the legendary longevity of the Toyota truck. It is not clear to me that Toyota is capable or interested in making new Tundras (and by extension Tacos) as durable as previous generation.
I agree. Take a small turbo engine and attach it to a 30 speed transmission and it’s not going to last long. And all of the new midsize trucks are doing this, and all will take a reliability hit. Except the Nissan. Long live the Frontier!
Unfortunately, no one is buying the new Frontier.
And being a Tacoma, the insurance claim could also be used to rebuild the entire house. (No snark intended, just obligatory Expensive Taco jokes. So sorry for all of the loss, hopefully this is an emblem of hope in the middle of it all.)
I’m enjoying the headline changes – at first it sounded like Lewin owned a Tacoma in California (which isn’t crazy with this crowd of course), now it sounds like it’s something Jason drew.
Will it next be an Adrian spec “Toyota Tacoma burns but large wheels just fine as they should be?”
A good idea is to set a fundraiser selling the truck in Cars&Bid or something similar to get money needed for these communities. I bet Doug will waive the fees, review it, give it a Doug score and raise a lot of money for it.
If he decides to keep it, I’d leave it exactly as it is (except for any mandated safety equipment like lights and such) and drive the hell out of it.
One Taco, extra crunchy.
I hope there were no Saturns in that neighborhood.
Or Fieros, which would be kind of… ironic?
I keep forgetting the Fiero was sort of a proto-Saturn SC1.
Because it was hotter than Mercury?
Plastic body panels
No need to ruin my stupid astronomy joke by explaining the first one :)FWIW, my wife’s old L200 did, in fact, get a nice little dent in the rear quarter plastic panel (from a metal truck bumper). Anything except a direct, blunt hit could easily deform those panels. They held up better than metal, but it was more marketing over substance.
I think some of the H-body (Bonneville, LeSabre, Delta 88) models from the 90’s also has plastic fenders and doors.
I remember they used to show in some of the brochures the spaceframe with no body panels on and crash test dummies buckled in, to highlight how the body panels weren’t structural. Might make for a physically large golf cart looking thing. Same if any Smarts were around.
Well done to Envision Toyota of West Covina for making that key from the VIN. These are the sort of stories of people helping each other that are great to read about rather than the division, blame and conspiracy theories we can get bogged down in while the fires still burn ( I deleted the threads app yesterday as tbh it was all getting toxic).
In Australia our smallest fire trucks are mostly 70 series landcruisers which a number of local companies engineer to carry average of 600litres of water to assist in remote areas. However I recently saw a fleet of specially equiped MB G wagons heading to a fire here in the state of Victoria.
STAPUFT vanity plate when?
I am amazed that the glass did not crack or shatter.
It’s kinda got that lightly toasted marshmallow look, right? Good color, slightly puffy, but no char!
The most delicious toasted marshmallow.
I’d get new tires, polymers change when they get hot, and I’m sure the black tires got hotter than the beige plastic.
I agree. But, at non-highway speeds, probably fine until things settle down.
Why even bother. The car is totaled and not road-legal in its current state. I wouldn’t sink ~$1k worth of tires into it.
all it needs is headlights a grill and a bumper. thats not toalled dude.
its “totaled” from an insurance standpoint. Meaning that the cost to bring it back to “normal” exceeds its value. But it also true it may run another 15 years with a salvage title.
Get headlights and you have old timer survivor cred for years.
Most insurance agents will negotiate a settlement for cosmetic damage and not do a salvage title if you ask.
That has been my experience anyway.
same here. Totalled does not means what it used to. it can be something as little as a part being on backorder for the reason a car is totalled these days.
First we had to worry about buying a rusty car from the north. Then we had to worry about buying a flooded car from the south.
Now we also have to worry about buying a melted car from the west?
The old CALIFORNIA CAR NEVER SEEN RAIN suddenly doesn’t seem so appealing. Just 10% more annoying than it already was.
I’m glad they have something material that was saved from the fire. A little bit of luck goes a long way.
Badass. Drive it as is. Use it to help the firefighters. Hollywood can’t write a better add than that.
This could easily be Toyota’s version of Jared From Subway, but since trucks can’t collect child porn, it’ll go much better!
Some people sure do get all fired up about their cars.
I am going to hell for laughing at this
Don’t be surprised if a slightly melted, but running Tacoma is there waiting for you.
That’s a pretty incendiary comment.
Wonder if this guy will end up with a new Tacoma courtesy of Toyota like the Tundra guy did. Easy marketing spend for them.
What happened with the Tundra guy?
See the comment from FlavouredMilk below. Looks like we both had similar thoughts at the same time.
My thoughts exactly. Toyota learned a lot from tearing down that million mile Tundra. This could be another great opportunity to learn what held up to the heat and what didn’t. Could be useful for emergency vehicle engineering.
https://www.motortrend.com/news/toyota-tundra-california-wildfire-replacement/
If I had a nickel for every time a Toyota truck notably survived a Californian wildfire, I’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice.
I mean, if I had to guess, I’d brace for at least a few more nickels. The difference is whether they all get reported on from here and whether that’s your threshold for “notably”.
It’s going to be strange if this stops being notable. Like, a LS400 making it to 1M miles became routine enough that Toyota wouldn’t do anything for Matt Farah because he wasn’t the original owner. Will Toyota get tired of this and start referring fire victims to their insurance company?
I mean, I doubt they do anything for people whose cars get burned in random house/apartment/garage/etc. fires any typical day. It’s just different now because it’s a newsworthy, unfortunate, huge fire affecting thousands of people. It’s visible and good publicity.
Not weird, just average Toyota shenanigans.