Toyotas, The Taliban And Maple Leaf Tattoos: An Unusual Tribute To The Toyota Hilux
From conflict-torn Afghanistan [via Newsweek] comes this strange tale of Taliban tribute to the “the vehicular equivalent of the AK-47”: the Toyota Hilux (more famous among Western car nuts for its infamous Top Gear adventures).
As the war in Afghanistan escalated several years ago, counterinsurgency expert David Kilcullen, a member of the team that designed the Iraq surge for Gen. David Petraeus, began to notice a new tattoo on some insurgent Afghan fighters. It wasn’t a Taliban tattoo. It wasn’t even Afghan. It was a Canadian maple leaf.
When a perplexed Kilcullen began to investigate, he says, he discovered that the incongruous flags were linked to what he says is one of the most important, and unnoticed, weapons of guerrilla war in Afghanistan and across the world: the lightweight, virtually indestructible Toyota Hilux truck.
“In Afghanistan in particular,” he says, “[the trucks are] incredibly well respected.” So well respected, in fact, that some enterprising fraudsters thought them worthy of ripping off. The imitations, Kilcullen says, had flooded the market, leaving disappointed fighters in their wake. But then “a shipment of high-quality [real] Hiluxes arrived, courtesy of the Canadian government,” he explains. “They had little Canadian flags on the back. Because they were the real deal, and because of how the Hilux is seen, over time, strangely, the Canadian flag has become a symbol of high quality across the country. Hence the tattoos.”
And yet somehow, we don’t see Toyota incorporating this touching story into its marketing campaign. From Afghanistan to Somalia, and from Nicaragua to Chad, the Hilux has been the ride of choice in conflict-torn hellholes for several decades now. A conflict between Libya and Chad in the 1980s was even dubbed “The Toyota War.” A former British special forces officer explains
The appeal is pretty simple. You can’t underestimate the value of having a vehicle that is fast, will never break down, and is strong enough to mount a heavy weapon in the back.
Which isn’t all that different from the Hilux’s original design concept as
a lightweight truck with big tires on big wheels. It was meant as a recreational truck, a truck people could have fun with. They also have a really high ground clearance, which means they’re ideal for off-road work.
The modern Hilux may “suck to drive” according to TTAC’s lone review of the “insurgent special,” but then the AK-47 isn’t exactly known for its accuracy either. Still, it’s no wonder that the US-market Tacoma ditched the solid-front axle in 1986… American trucks are built for the road, not armed insurgency (although our middle-east correspondent informed us a few years ago that US service men were stripping Hilux manual transmissions, forcing the military to replace them with Silverado Z71s) . Curious as to what makes the Hilux different from the US-market Tacoma? Brian894x4.com has your answers here. Want to check out some American Hiluxes, soldiering on as Curbside Classics? Check it out.
More by Edward Niedermeyer
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Years back when we were seeing TV shots of the Taliban in Afghanistan, I saw all those Toyota pickups and Hilux models, some with machine guns mounted on the pickup bed, and well, that was it for me ---- if those vehicles hold up over there, I thought, they certainly will do ok on US roads, without the machine guns and an occasional oil change.
The Toyota pickup is THE third world vehicle, no contest. I was in the caribbean many years ago and they seemed to be the national car of the country, banged up like crazy but still driving nonetheless. These cars are so tough they should be on someone's flag, like the AK-47 is. A marvel of engineering. You can almost tell how poor a country is by the amount of Toyota pickups there. To give you an example, look at the Battle of Fada, an attack by forces with Toyota pickups against a superior armoured force: "784 Libyans died, 92 T-55 tanks and 33 BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicles were destroyed, and 13 T-55s and 18 BMP-1s captured, together with 81 Libyan soldiers. Chadian losses were mininimal: only 18 soldiers died and three Toyotas were destroyed." Yes, thats THREE pickup trucks lost against 92 tanks. If I would have to drive in a war zone, I'd choose a Toyota. It will outlast you AND anyone shooting at you... And yes you can put a huge gun in the back. Recoil is irrelevant...just shoot the bloody gun, have it wheel you back 30 feet, and put on the brakes. Been that way for 60+ years, I've heard those stories since WWII and in Vietnam (Sheridan anyone?). It doesn't matter how big the gun is, if the frame can stand the shock you can use the gun. Yes it's not pretty but it will kill your enemy. The technical can hold any recoil-less rifle/gun, all anti-tank missiles, mortars, and quite a lot of medium-sized anti-aircraft guns like .50s or even zsu-23s. Haven't seen any with full-sized howitzers yet or with 40mm Bofors, but I'm knocking on wood right now. They certainly can tow them. BTW: It is well-known you have to clean the M4 AR twice a day in desert conditions to prevent it from fouling up, so there's no contest between the M4 and the AK-47 either. The m16/m4 design is inherently fouling; it deposits the gases straight back into the mechanism, and has tighter tolerancies than the AK-47. You can drop an AK-47 into a swamp, have a tank drive over it, and fire it from that position. (Its even on youtube) Unless you got a souped-up service train behind your army, reliability and sturdiness beats everything else hands down. Americans and all other western armies HAVE that service train behind them, so they never experienced the true reliability of their weaponry, and they get to pick the highest performers with great accuracy and lowest weight. Everybody that doesn't have that luxury has an AK-47. Period.