Tested: 2025 Toyota Hilux – Full review, price & features

The Hilux can be specified in single-cab or extra-cab bodystyles (the latter being what other pick-up makers call a king cab, with some storage space behind the front seats) at lower levels in the range.

Our Invincible X test car was well built and well-equipped, with lots of hard-wearing buttons and switches. There’s a lot of no-nonsense black plastics, which should fare well when faced with outside conditions. 

For 2025, the brand has finally added its latest infotainment system, which is a significant improvement on the unit it replaces. 

In double-cab variants, the rearmost seats are usable by most adults, but the available space is closer to that of a medium-sized saloon than a large SUV.

It has a flatbed load bay measuring almost a metre and a half in length and which can be ordered in an open configuration or covered with a hardtop.

We tested the car with an open flatbed, in which form it gets a black ‘sports bar’ as standard. Some might prefer a single cab and a longer load bay, but the lifestyle pick-up market is made up almost entirely of double-cab trucks like this, for whose owners the usability of a four- or even five-seat cab is key.

In the GR Sport variant, some uniquely upholstered sports seats are an attempt to lift the ambience of the driving environment: they’re leather/Alcantara with ‘GR’ stitching and are comfy and accessible.

Some predictable performance touches are in evidence: metal-look ‘sports’ pedals and ‘GR’ badges on the steering wheel and sill trims, and one on the transmission tunnel that looks especially like an afterthought.

If the idea of dressing up an interior such as this – clearly designed for durability and simplicity of functionality – to feel at all special seems strange in principle, the effect is likewise odd in practice.

The glossy, red-accented carbonfibre trim on the dashboard doesn’t sit comfortably next to the plainer, harder-wearing mouldings around it. The speakers of the JBL premium sound system, plonked unflatteringly on the dashboard, look borderline absurd.

The primary control ergonomics are at least decent. The Hilux could do with more telescopic steering column adjustment for taller drivers, but that shouldn’t stop most people from getting comfortable at the wheel.

Between a pair of gloveboxes, a good-sized armrest cubby and useful door bins, the cabin offers plenty of storage. Visibility is good in all directions, with surround-view cameras helping you park what is, don’t forget, a 5.3-metre-long vehicle.

As such, and compared with large SUVs especially, the practicality compromise offered by vehicles such as this remains a particular, and slightly strange, one.

A medium-sized SUV offers greater passenger accommodation for a family, in a vehicle of a much more easily manageable and parkable size. The case for the pick-up hinges on what it might cost to run, what it might carry besides people and what else it might do for you.