Trolled By Toyota: MR2 Turns Out to be Lifted Kei Truck!

The rumours of Toyota bringing back its mid-engined and marvellous MR2 have been fuelling headlines for quite a while now, with many outlets (us included) pointing to the Tokyo Auto Salon (TAS) as the venue for the reveal.

Well, it seems as though the Toyota CEO, Akio Toyoda, might just have pulled off the best piece of trolling by an automotive boss ever. It turns out that the mid-engined ‘toy’ Toyoda was alluding to during that cryptic social media teaser was, in fact, a kei truck!

But it’s not just any old/tiny kei truck. It’s trick, seriously trick! Officially called the GR Hijet Morizo K-Trail (Morizo being Akio’s racing alter ego), it’s a lifted, luridly painted, big-wheeled kei truck - with an extra set of seats thrown on the pick-up bed for good measure.

The truck came about thanks to a kind of truck build-off between Toyota and Daihatsu, which revealed its Hijet Jumbo Star Climber at the same event. While the Toyota looks like a USA-spec truck in miniature form, the Daihatsu entry is a lot less eye-catching, looking more like the kind of thing you’d try to escape the zombie apocalypse in.

So what about the new Toyota MR2!?

While it seems like that is putting to bed the dream of a new MR2 hitting the road anytime soon, let’s not be too hasty. There is a chance, and a big one, that Toyota used the teasing around the new MR2, and the subsequent drop of this wild-looking off-roader as a springboard to help ensure the hype doesn’t slow down.

There is also the small matter of numerous prototypes being spotted in both race and production forms. The new MR2 is still coming, we might just have to wait a bit.