Toyota Gave Us Diesel Pickups For Five Short Years, Then Took Them Away Forever

Toyota does a roaring trade in trucks in North America. The Tundra and Tacoma sell hundreds of thousands of units a year in the face of stiff competition from domestic automakers. Toyota achieves this every year despite completely ignoring an entire segment of the truck market: diesels. But it wasn’t always this way!

Once upon a time, your local Toyota dealer would have happily handed you the keys to a diesel pickup. In fact, they’d have been handing you the keys to a diesel Hilux. Back in the 1980s, that wasn’t even controversial!

Today, such trucks are now expressly forbidden from the United States. If you asked for a diesel Toyota pickup, you’d be laughed out of the dealership! Instead, let’s dive back into a time when Huey Lewis was on the radio and Betamax still had a shot against VHS. And, most importantly, when Toyota was just getting its feet wet in the world of diesel pickups.

Take The L

The 1970s was a time of change for the auto industry, particularly in the US. Today, we know it as the Malaise Era. Cars and trucks were suffering as ever-more restrictive smog equipment robbed engines of power. More relevant to the average consumer, though, were gas prices. They were bad enough at the best of times and hit wild peaks when the Iranian Revolution spawned a major energy crisis in 1979.

Automakers were not ignorant to the changing winds. Smaller, more efficient cars began to steal sales from larger models, and imports became a serious force in the US market. In the quest for greater fuel efficiency, engineers pursued all kinds of routes. Diesel was one of the most promising. Diesel engines could offer efficiency, as long as customers were willing to make the trade off for somewhat lazier acceleration. The late 1970s saw diesels come to passenger cars and to pickup trucks alike. Most notably, Chevrolet threw a gas-derived V8 diesel in its trucks to very little success, while Dodge fared a little better in its pre-Cummins years.

At the time, Toyota had much the same idea as its US-based rivals. 1978 saw the launch of the new third-generation Toyota Hilux, and just a year later, diesel power came along. The Hilux would receive the L engine, which Toyota first designed in 1977.

Simply designated the L, the engine was water-cooled with a single overhead cam. Toyota lauded the engine for its “quiet running” nature, thanks to its fabric rubber timing belt, along with its viscous clutch-type cooling fan and oil pan baffles. It also scored underhood sound insulation to further quiet things down.

In the Hilux, the L engine delivered 62 horsepower and 93 pound-feet of torque. This compared relatively poorly to the standard 20R gasoline engine, with the 2.2-liter engine offering 90 horsepower and 122 pound-feet of torque in comparison. In fact, the gas engine was shared with the Toyota Celica of the time, making it a racehorse compared to the diesel unit.

North America did get the Hilux back then, but it was simply titled the Toyota Pickup in the US. It would take a couple of years for the oil burner to filter through to the US market, where it arrived in 1981. It was initially available as a 2WD truck in the Long Bed Deluxe trim, with a five-speed manual transmission.

Toyota’s first diesel truck didn’t make the same mistakes as some of its rivals. The engine may not have been fast, but it was relatively reliable. Key to this point was that Toyota included a water separator in the engine design, with a warning light if water levels grew too high in the fuel sedimentor. Toyota also covered cold-start concerns, with dual heavy-duty batteries providing lots of juice for the glow plugs and starter.

The Japanese automaker even capitalized on General Motor’s own failure, perhaps out of a desire to avoid the bad name diesel had gotten from the disastrous Oldsmobile V8.

Plus, the Toyota diesel was designed from the ground up as a diesel engine, not converted from an existing gasoline engine like the General Motors diesel. Another key point to remember: Toyota has been building diesel engines for over 20 years!

-Toyota diesel truck brochure, 1981

Fuel economy was a mighty 31 mpg or 38 mpg highway. This was in an era when the standard gasoline model was getting closer to 20 mpg, so there were big savings to be had. Zero-to-60 mph times are hard to come by for the diesel, but “glacial” would be a good estimation. The gasoline models were achieving the sprint in a leisurely 13.3 seconds in 1980; the diesel was probably closer to 20 seconds, if not longer.

Toyota eventually expanded the lineup. By 1982, you could purchase a diesel truck in the sporty SR5 trim, and by 1983, with four-wheel drive. The trucks remained slow, but they did the job well enough that Toyota decided to continue pursuing diesel into the next generation.

Take Another L

The next generation of Pickup landed in 1984 with a slightly squarer design. With it came a new generation of diesel power in the form of Toyota’s 2L engine. It could be had on both two- and four-wheel-drive models from the outset.

Don’t get confused—2L was the designation, not the displacement. In fact, Toyota wound displacement out to 2.4 liters on the 2L engine. The basic 2L would deliver a healthier 75 horsepower and 114 pound-feet of torque. This measured up against the basic carbureted gasoline engine, the 100-horsepower 22R. The new 22R-E was a little further ahead, which achieved 106 horsepower with the aid of electronic fuel injection.

The new 2L diesel retained its fuel economy advantage. For two-wheel-drive models, where the EFI gasoline engine was achieving 25 mpg, or 33 mpg highway, in the new Pickup, the diesel could do 35 mpg, 44 mpg highway.

Toyota then took things up a notch, introducing the 2L-T. The new turbo-diesel engine increased power to 84 horsepower and 137 pound-feet of torque. It was still down on power compared to the best EFI gas engines in the Toyota pickup, which had reached 116 horsepower by 1985. However, it was drawing level on torque, with 137 pound-feet of torque compared to the EFI gas engine’s 140 pound-feet in comparison.

Toyota’s turbodiesel came to the party a full five years after International Harvester’s awesome effort. It didn’t have a huge amount of power, but it was still a welcome boost over the naturally aspirated engine.

Regardless, by this point, the diesel was falling out of favor with Toyota’s American arm. Early on, the diesel models got a full-page spread in the brochures. Now they were relegated to small photos tucked in the corner and a note on the specifications page.

It’s clear Toyota wasn’t pushing the model hard, perhaps perceiving it was no longer of great appeal to the broader customer base. By the 1980s, gas prices had eased, while the memories of GM’s awful diesels were still fresh in the minds of many consumers. While Toyota’s diesel engines were competent, they lacked the raw grunt that would come with the larger turbodiesel engines that were just around the corner.

Toyota’s gasoline engines had closed the gap in fuel economy, too. In 1985, the Pickup’s gas EFI engine could do 23 mpg, or 27 mpg highway. The diesel would score 31 mpg, or 34 mpg highway, while giving up 41 horsepower in the process. The turbodiesel only gave up 32 horsepower, but also only scored 30 mpg, whether in the normal or highway EPA cycles. Likely, this was down to the turbodiesel’s gearing and power curve, which may have kept it on boost at highway revs. This would have negated the usual mileage boost in highway driving.

You Only Want What You Can’t Have

Toyota dropped the diesel in the US by 1986. Though it happily continued on elsewhere, Toyota would never bring a diesel pickup back to the American market.

The final nail in the coffin was the death of the Hilux itself. While the mid-sized truck has gone on to legendary success around the world, it wasn’t seen as the right truck for American tastes. The Toyota Pickup, as it was known, would hang on in the US until 1995, when the Toyota Tacoma took over instead. It was engineered with a greater focus on comfort and more car-like handling, given the particular tastes of US customers. Where the Hilux was seen as a work truck in most of the world, Toyota wanted something for Americans who commonly used their trucks as personal vehicles.

Toyota’s US arm didn’t forget about diesel entirely. 2007 saw the development of the Toyota Tundra Diesel Project Truck. It was thoroughly American through and through, with the engine-swapped “1-ton” truck debuting at the 2007 SEMA show.

The concept truck had a customized suspension front and back to build a properly heavy-duty towing setup. It came complete with a 24,000-pound fifth-wheel trailer hitch from Reese, and dually rear wheels to handle the load. It rocked Alcoa brushed aluminum rims that told the world this thing was all business.

Under the hood, Toyota had squeezed a massive 8.0-liter Hino turbodiesel truck engine. It had 260 horsepower and a mighty 585 pound-feet of torque, which were serious numbers for the era. The six-cylinder donk was originally designed for massive commercial trucks with gross vehicle weight ratings up to 35,000 pounds. That kind of grunt makes sense if you’ve got an insanely heavy fifth-wheel trailer hanging off the back of your rig. The engine sent power to a Meritor rear end via a heavy-duty 5-speed manual from Eaton.

A diesel Tundra may have appealed to some, but the concept did not make serious waves at the time. It wasn’t really a serious build for Toyota by any means. The Hino drivetrain was simply not a reasonable fit for the Tundra, however cool that might have been. It also came out just before the Great Recession hit, and at a time when even established automakers were struggling to get their diesels to meet new stringent EPA regulations.

Diesel Toyota pickups are still a big thing on the world stage. Australians especially love a Toyota turbodiesel, when they’re not choking on their own exhaust, anyway. It’s the same story in South Africa, and many other countries besides.

For America, though, it’s an entirely different matter. Toyota has said no, and it’s been saying no for quite some time. You shall not have a Hilux, and you shall not have a diesel truck. You had your chance for five short years, and you missed it. You’ll use gasoline forever more, and no other fuel. And you’ll like it! With the electric wave looming ever larger and Toyota’s pickup sales remaining strong, don’t expect that to change any time soon.

Image credits: Toyota