Toyota HiLux Workmate single cab 2019 Review

Description

Toyota HiLux Workmate single cab 2019 Review

Design – is there anything interesting about its design? 8/10

You don’t get the latest trapezoidal grille design found on more upmarket grades and many items are finished in cost-saving black including the grille, lower front bumper section, door handles, mirrors and steel wheels. And there are also conspicuous blank inserts in place of missing higher-grade features like front fog lights and numerous buttons and switches.

The manual gearbox is only a five-speeder. However, its short 4.3:1 first gear is fine for getting heavy loads underway while its over-driven fifth, combined with relatively tall 3.6:1 diff gearing, allows the 2.4 to cruise comfortably on the highway.

Toyota claims a combined average of 7.7 litres/100km but our figure, calculated from fuel bowser and tripmeter readings after 531km of ‘real world’ testing, worked out at 8.9 litres. That was impressively close to the lab-based official figure and excellent for a one-tonner. Based on our numbers you could expect a big driving range of close to 900km from its 80-litre tank.

Practicality – How practical is the space inside? 8/10

The 1570kg kerb weight and 2810kg GVM results in a sizeable 1240kg payload rating. And when you deduct the weight of the 140kg aluminium tray from that, it still leaves 1100kg of load capacity.

It’s also rated to tow up to 2500kg of braked trailer but with its 5280kg GCM (or how much you can legally carry and tow at the same time) the payload limit drops to 1070kg. In other words, to tow  2500kg you only need to reduce GVM by 30kg – a very practical set of numbers for a wide variety of work applications.

The Toyota aluminium tray is (internally) 1777mm wide and 2550mm long. It features rattle-free drop-sides plus a robust rear screen protector, which surprisingly lacks pivoting load retainers at the top on each side which are ideal for ‘book-ending’ long lengths of timber, PVC pipe, copper tubing etc.

Even so, there’s heaps of tie-down points. Internally they total 16, provided by aluminium rails along both sides which sit inboard of the drop-sides, with eight holes in each for securing ropes or tie-down hooks. There are also four rope-rails beneath the floor on each side, for external load anchoring if required.

Although it’s a single cab there are numerous storage options, including a bottle holder and open bin in each door, pop-out cup/bottle holders on each side of the lower dashboard, two glovebox compartments (the lower lockable) and an overhead glasses holder. There’s also a centre console unit with an open storage bin in front of the gear-stick and another beside the handbrake, plus two cup/bottle holders at the back.

We’ve never ridden a bucking bull in a rodeo, but our test vehicle’s ride when empty provided a pretty good simulation of it. The leaf-spring rear suspension was so firm and the unladen tray so light, at times it felt like there was no suspension at all, resulting in many hard thumps in the lower back when driving over bumps. And the bigger the bumps, the harder the thumps.

It didn’t take long to become fatigued by this, particularly on corrugated dirt roads and heavily-patched bitumen back roads used during our test. So if you want to avoid the chiropractor, best cure is a decent load over the rear wheels. Therefore this vehicle would be best suited to work applications that require either lots of heavy lifting, or a custom-built tray that’s permanently loaded with heavy tools and/or equipment.

We secured 975kg on the tray, which with our 100kg driver was just under the 1100kg payload limit. With the bulk of this load ahead of the rear axle line, the rear springs only compressed 45mm (with more than 50mm of bump-stop clearance remaining) and the nose dipped 21mm, resulting in a near-level ride height.

Not surprisingly, the harsh unladen ride quality was transformed, as the rear suspension is primarily designed to lug this weight. The ride was still firm but much smoother, soaking up bumps and corrugations with ease and with little effect on steering feel and braking.

The engine’s broad spread of torque combined with well-matched gears provided energetic performance with or without a load. In top gear on the highway it cruised along within its peak torque zone, with 2300rpm at 100km/h and 2500rpm at 110km/h.

It was surprisingly quiet at these speeds but some wind noise was noticeable around the door mirrors and rear window protector frame. There was also an intermittent buzzing sound, like a high frequency vibration, coming from somewhere within the cabin at speeds above 100km/h, which became annoying after a while.

At maximum GVM it coped easily with our 13 per cent gradient 2.0km set climb, maintaining the 60km/h speed limit in third gear at 2400rpm on light throttle. Engine braking in second gear on the way down was good but not great, requiring a stab or two of the brakes to stop it spinning past the 4400rpm redline on overrun. Not bad for a 2.4-litre turbo-diesel, but the Triton’s 2.4 had stronger retardation under a similar load.

Safety – What safety equipment is fitted? What safety rating? 8/10

Ownership – What does it cost to own? What warranty is offered? 8/10

 

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