There is no drug quite like nostalgia because it’s a drug that no two people experience the same way. A bite of Count Chocula is just surgary cereal to my daughter, but to me it’s a time machine that takes me back to my own childhood. Marcel Proust had it right. Also, Proust would have driven the ever-lovin’ crap out of this two-door Toyota.
The automaker says the 4Runner TRD Surf Concept “draws inspiration from an iconic time in history when the Toyota 4Runner became a staple at 80s So-Cal beaches, as surfers sought the perfect wave.” If you were a surfer in that period and that geography maybe it means something to you. It does not to me.
What the 4Runner represents to me, more than anything, was a time when you could actually get a two-door SUV. Because an SUV didn’t have to be a vehicle for everyone it was expected back then that the base option for one of these trucks was the omission of the rear doors.
More than anything, the success of the Ford Explorer and the shift from SUV-as-truck to SUV-as-family-wagon killed the two-door model. It was too much money and too much time to build one for too few customers. The same is starting to happen with actual pickup trucks.
We need to go back to building two-door SUVs and Toyota is the perfect automaker to do it.
We Are At An Undesirable Moment In History
The period leading up to 2020 could have been the apotheosis of car choice in the ICE era. There were a large number of models available, in various configurations, giving consumers a Golden Corral’s worth of options.
Just looking at the sixth-generation S550 Ford Mustang you could walk out with a convertible V6 automatic cruiser, an EcoBoost 2.3-liter inline-four fastback set up for track duty, and any number of V8s producing up to 760 horsepower. The Toyota Camry at various points was available as a coupe, a convertible, a sedan, and a wagon.
But, somewhere in the late teens, automakers started shifting money to electric cars. The assumption was that electrification would be a must and therefore it would be undesirable to make a lot of different small platforms given the investment that was necessary.
Toyota didn’t quite fall into this trap and instead focused more on offering various powertrains, especially hybrids, but it too fell victim to some lineup oversimplification. It’s in this period that we witnessed the death of sedans/cars/coupes from most automakers and the obliteration of other fun niche models. At no point in my career can I remember fewer interesting submodels than right now in North America. Remember when Mercedes-Benz used to make a coupe and convertible version of basically everything? Now the coupes have been rationalized down to the CLE Cabriolet and SL Roadster (itself the merger of two vehicle lines).
I hate this. I super hate this. Eventually, electrification and extremely modular platforms might lead to a neo-Cambrian era of model explosion like we’re seeing in China, but that’s many years away.
Until then, it’s boring and I’m not even sure it’s great business.
Why?
Toyota reported that its sales, though up significantly this year, were down year-over-year in October by 8.0%. This is due to a number of factors, but the highest among them is the stop-sale of the Grand Highlander and Lexus TX equivalents. These were supposed to be key vehicles for the automaker, but a pesky recall has kept them from being sold and hampered sales.
Is simplifying the lineup so much that you produce too many versions of the same vehicle actually a risk? The costs of engineering a bunch of vehicles on the same platform under the same nameplate are definitely high, but automakers are already spending that money to extend platforms. There’s probably a diminishing return on building and marketing (also expensive) niche models, but if we can have five two-row SUV/crossovers (RAV4, Corolla Cross, Crown Signia, 4Runner, Venza) and four three-row SUV/crossovers (Land Cruiser, Highlander, Highlander Max, Sequoia) from Toyota isn’t there room for at least one of these?
Back in the ’90s and ’00s you could get a two-door Pathfinder, Navajo, Explorer, Tahoe, Yukon, Vehicross, Amigo, Freelander, Trooper, and even a two-door 4Runner. Given that essentially all of those vehicles are gone, perhaps now is the time to get all of that untapped market.
The Actual TRD Surf Concept Is Cool
That was all a bit of an aside as the actual TRD Surf Concept, which will be at SEMA next week, is pretty rad as the kids don’t say.
Toyota started with a 2025 4Runner TRD Limited equipped with the iForce 2.4-liter turbo motor, so already there’s 278 horsepower and 317 lb-ft of torque on hand, all put down via a full-time 4WD system and an electronically controlled dual-range transfer case. From a powertrain perspective, the only real upgrade is a custom exhaust.
The suspension gets a little more work with custom front axles, billet aluminum front upper and lower A-arms, and the rear-end housing from a Tundra. All of this is connected to custom 17-inch wheels supporting 37-inch tires.
To be a “surf” truck the first thing that has to go is the roof and, from there, the logic is quite clear. To take the roof off you don’t want a set of rear doors to deal with so those got tossed and a custom-built top was created. I’m glad they didn’t try to make a four-door convertible because those usually look wrong when built using modern vehicles.
A shortened version of the 4Runner, complete with bigger flared fenders and a roll hoop just feels right. There’s no cognitive leap necessary to accept this as exactly what an SUV should be. And while the little surfing touches like the waterproof interior and retro graphics are fun, no part of this seems impossible for a brand like Toyota to engineer.
I suppose one might argue that you can just build an SR5 Xtra Cab 4×4 that approximates a lot of this utility, it doesn’t look as cool. Nothing looks quite as cool as this.
There are a lot of SEMA concepts from a lot of automakers that probably shouldn’t be built and I have no real belief that Toyota is going to do anything other than trot this around for a year, relegate it to a basement, and crush it because that’s what always happens.
I’m an optimist. I am audacious enough to have hope. Maybe if enough people respond positively to this concept Toyota will do what others have been afraid to do and give us a real, honest-to-goodness two-door SUV.
I fear if they built this it’d fall into the same trap the other ‘cars for a youth market’ like the Element and FJ did, they won’t be able to afford it!
This really does look totally awesome…love the blue
The real opportunity is this functions as both a pickup and an SUV like the old two doors used to. You’ve got seats in the rear for when you have passengers and you can remove the top when you need to haul something. Less compromise than a 4 door short bed pickup imo.