The world’s biggest automaker and the most valuable automotive brand is always doing the right thing, even when going left. As such, when Toyota started to give their most popular models deep facelifts and call them a new generation, they thought no one observed the prank.
Well, that wasn’t exactly true. Let’s take a look at the ‘all-new’ Camry, which is Toyota’s mid-size sedan and one of the best-selling passenger cars in the world. It’s also America’s all-time favorite when you’re not talking about trucks or SUVs, and yet the company didn’t change much for its XV80 iteration from its predecessor.
In fact, the XV70 and XV80 Toyota Camry share the entire TNGA-K platform with the complete underlying body structure, plus the front doors and the roofline. And yet, Toyota said it was an all-new Camry when it was introduced at the 2023 Los Angeles Auto Show in November that year. But there were changes – such as the fact it’s a hybrid-only model in North America or Europe.
The same is allegedly going to happen with the all-time best-selling nameplate of 2024 – the Toyota RAV4 compact crossover SUV will switch to the XA60 sixth iteration, but it will most likely share with the XA50 fifth generation the same TNGA-K modular platform along with various other bits and pieces. That’s unlike what they did with the mid-size Tacoma pickup truck plus the Land Cruiser J250 and N500 Toyota 4Runner SUV, but those were obviously too old to do the same.
Curiously, age isn’t necessarily a factor in that equation for the Japanese – the rumor mill believes that the upcoming Toyota Hilux international mid-size pickup truck will soldier on with the IMV platform rather than switch to TNGA-F even though it’s been around in this form since 2015. As such, it will follow in the footsteps of the Camry and the next RAV4 by receiving a deep facelift rather than an all-new treatment.
Moving on, the SUV counterpart of the Hilux – the Toyota Fortuner, also known as the Toyota SW4 – could follow in the same footsteps. Who thinks that? Well, it’s the members of the imaginative guild of digital car content creators dwelling across the parallel universes of vehicular CGI – the ones that help the rumor mill fulfill its visions with timely renderings of upcoming models.
One of them, the virtual artist better known as Theottle on social media, has resorted to CGI slicing and dicing the second-generation Toyota Fortuner, which has also been around since 2015, like the Hilux, to envision the third iteration. Continuing with the deep facelift trend, the off-road-focused SUV will keep the IMV platform alive for another few years. However, the pixel master went for an interesting twist in his latest unofficial, hypothetical behind-the-scenes making a design project.
So, in order to make the Toyota Fortuner look fresh and also rise above its pay grade, the CGI expert decided to infuse the current iteration with the stylish design language of the sixteenth-generation Toyota Crown series. The result is pretty impressive if you ask us about our two cents on the CGI matter – a stylish SUV with modern traits but also a vehicle that quite obviously fully retains its off-road chops.
So, what do you think? Should they make it like this or not? Also, do you approve of Toyota’s fixation on deep facelifts and calling them all-new generations
