The era of luxury apartment grey is so over. You know what I’m talking about — those laminate plank floors. While the past few years have thrown words like “demure” and “mindful” at us, it seems like maximalism is finally making a comeback. It’s time for noisy music, flash photography, and oh yes, bright colors to return. In that vein, Toyota’s TRD Pro Tacoma, 4Runner, Tundra, and Sequoia are getting a new Wave Maker color for the 2026 model year, and trust me, you aren’t going to be able to ignore it.
The TRD Pro line has previously offered some bold colors like the intensely saturated Voodoo Blue, the electric Lime Rush, and the bright Solar Octane, but things have gone muted over the past few years. The red-brown of 2024’s Terra looks like viewing lava in a solar eclipse, and 2025’s Mudbath is far more demure, largely because it’s less saturated than the Quicksand color that was popular on the old Tacoma. It’s time things flipped back to bright, and Wave Maker is bright indeed.
Forget mere blue, Wave Maker is pretty much cyan, and it rules. It looks even more vibrant than the Blue Vector color available on last year’s Lexus IS 500, and you already needed sunglasses to look at that car in the sunlight. Like blue raspberry or blue cotton candy, this new color is the sort of blue that feels engineered in the best way possible.
Of course, new highlight colors often come with interesting designer speak attached, and Wave Runner elicited an amusing quote from CALTY Ann Arbor general manager Benjamin Jiminez: “With Wave Maker, we were inspired by unexplored areas of adventure including extreme territory and even beyond earth.” Beyond earth? Correct me if I’m wrong, but the planet most similar to Wave Runner in color is Uranus, a celestial body impossible to talk about with any sort of maturity. If that’s part of the inspiration, I can understand the somewhat unusual phrasing.
Perhaps best of all, because Wave Maker is a TRD Pro truck and SUV exclusive, you’re going to get a lot of it, should you tick the option box. A Tacoma already isn’t exactly small, but just imagine seeing a Wave Maker Sequoia in person. That’s a whole lot of this color in one place, a rolling billboard for making interesting and exciting choices.
We’ll have to wait until autumn for Wave Maker to start showing up on the 2026 TRD Pro models, and while it seems like a summer color, maybe the timing works because this hue also seems like it could fight back a little against seasonal depression. Even under the overcast skies in some press photos, it’s still megawatt material. Anyway, kudos to Toyota for trying a bright color again. While we do wish for greater availability, it’s possible the color grows popular enough to breach TRD Pro containment. After all, Inferno was a TRD Pro color before it spread to other Toyota models.
Top graphic credit: Toyota/smurf.com
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Not for my ride personally… but I do like it and it should bring a smile to everyone who sees it.
I love it. Now let’s see more orange, yellow, and green on the road.
Awesome shade of blue.
Now, who’s going to be 1st to bring back Teal? We’re getting there
Of course I love talking about car colors, since I think cars in actual colors are so much better than those in greyscale. That Wave Maker blue actually strikes me as gentle and easy-on-the-eyes and I like it more than Toyota’s recent Voodoo Blue, which is so intensely saturated that it’s almost hard to look at (well, not really, but you know what I mean: it’s like an OSHA safety blue or something). 🙂
The TRD Pro Tacoma comes from the factory looking like a teenager named Kaydon or Kolton went apeshit with the plasti-dip, and it starts at only $63,735. That’s pure madness! That’s the same price range as many 3/4 ton diesel pickups.
That, Mr. Dodge Durango color chooser guy… is BLUE.
https://www.theautopian.com/america-where-trucks-that-accelerate-faster-than-corvettes-are-legal-but-tiny-imports-are-not-cotd/
Learn from the past. Colors were a thing.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ee/74/9a/ee749aa4b1e6d4f09ee3c9cf1543d3d9.jpg
I am the only one to remember that GM had 3 colour paint jobs on some of their cars in 80’s.
I miss those.
Toyota uses a similar color to this on a lot of their cars. The RAV4, Corolla, GR86 (Neptune blue, which mine is), and probably some others all have a bright blue and they’re mildly popular.
Wonder how fast the Wrap guys will be printing that color for the people wanting to up badge without up badging their base Taco?
I’m just not about this generation of it.
I test-drove the previous generation, felt roomy-ish inside, old-school but nice.
New (this) one felt numb to drive, bigger outside, way too claustrophobic on the inside.. and expensive.
Great color, ugly and expensive truck.
Unfortunately I can’t see the general public buying colors like this in mass, but it’s nice for the .1% of car enthusiasts who buy new.
I love the colour, it’s a shame the Tacoma and 4Runner cost 80 bajillion dollars these days.
But only a $2500 market adjustment on top of that 80 bajillion, so it’s not all doom and gloom.
I hope they go farther back in their past color catalog for color options. Paradise Blue, Mystic Purple, Imperial Jade (green), Sun Fusion (yellow) would all be awesome colors to bring back!
+1 for Imperial Jade. That color was fantastic!
Perfect color to bring back sweet factory vinyl graphics for. Something purple, maybe jazz wave adjacent, would be sick.
The first 2.5 years of Tacoma offered a color called Paradise Blue Metallic that had PURPLE graphics.
BRING. IT. BACK.
That’s exactly what I’m talking about!
I am a little worried that the current generation’s body panels are a bit too busy to pull it off, but I’m sure they can think of something.
I’m all for anything that isn’t greyscale.
I had a Voodoo Blue Tundra and will take to my grave that it was the single best color ever put to a vehicle.
The saturation and depth were unreal. My friend gave it the name “Massau” which roughly translates, from Japanese, as “very blue”
Voodoo Blue is one of those colors I use heavily in Gran Turismo when doing builds. It looks really good on a MK4 Supra
Awwww… you got my hopes up. I thought it was actually called “Smurfy”. but hooray for color !!
Just want to point out that BMW made e46 M3s (at least) in more or less that color. It probably had an official name, but everyone called it ‘Smurf blue’
Laguna Seca Blue
It’s a great color, but just want to note that in the article you switch between wave maker and wave runner. I assume it’s called wave maker? Not sure, but worth an edit.
If I could have gotten this color on my RAV, I absolutely would have. I hate that it’s locked to the TRD Pros, but I hope it trickles down for the next model year.
I genuinely wonder why companies lock bright colors behind expensive trim packages? Why can’t I get a strippo-model Taco in bright blue? Aren’t those customers more likely to buy fun colors than those who have to take out a 2nd mortgage for the lease payments? It feels like a thumb on the scale against vibrant colors being offered – “hmm, customer take rate of bright blue was only 2%, compared with 79% storm trooper white… let’s save costs by eliminating that option code.”
It seems pretty obvious to me-it’s to rope people into buying more expensive cars and create scarcity so dealerships can charge whatever they want. Toyota is as good at this as anyone, especially with their stupid allocation system. They make cool stuff, make a few too few of them, lock the cool stuff behind a massive paywall, and wink at their dealerships.
The goal isn’t to sell you a $45,000 SR5 in this color…it’s to convince the person coming in to look at the $45,000 SR5 that what they really need is the $60,000 TRD Pro with the $6,000 ADM….and check it out! With our in house financing wizardry the payment is only $100 more a month! You can TOTALLY afford it! Interest rate? I don’t know what you’re talking about just look at that $999 monthly payment!
Bingo, I usually get more surprised when high trim levels get their color selection reduced. GM is a big offender. Denali usually has the fewest color options than any other trim.
The scarcity already exists for the model, a dealer is going to have like several regular trims available for every special one like a TRD Pro. At the end of the day the dealer is trying to move a unit too, and if they’re good at moving the regular ones that can mean more specialty ones down the line. They don’t really benefit from letting those plain ones sit and waste their time convincing someone to move up to a harder-to-find unit. The specialty trims almost always have people seeking them out already because of the allocation system. Actually a dealer could have as much to gain by trying to convince someone coming in on something they can’t afford, to move down a trim to work with the budget, because they can hold more on their end.
I dislike how accurate this is.
To be fair, the PRO colors generally filter down to the lower models (not base model though).
Coming soon to mall crawlers with $1,500 monthly car payments near you!
…all jokes aside it’s a very nice blue. The Heritage Blue that they offer on the new 4Runner is very nice as well, albeit it’s a little less vibrant than this. Hopefully this does trickle down to other models because the TRD Pros are an exercise in overkill and excess. Put it on lower trim 4Runner and I just might be in.
Love it. We so so need anything other than black, white and shades of grey.
That color doesn’t look very eye-searing to me…
Now if it were green…
Nori green…
https://paultan.org/image/2019/08/2020_Lexus_LC_Inspriation_Series_f34_NR-e1565838248817.jpg
That is very nice. The LC is one of the few new cars I genuinely desire, despite not being either very practical or a great driver’s car. That color combo is especially lovely.
you haven’t seen them turn on the color matched underbody neon yet, then your eyes will feel the sear.