TOYOTA'S TASTY TACOMA X-RUNNER CONCEPT REVEALED AT SEMA 2K23.

There are a few Toyota concept builds that were revealed at SEMA 2k23, and this one here indicates that Toyota thinks the Sport Truck category may be gaining some traction in the market. To be fair, if all manufacturers created something like this and added it to their product lineup, more people would be interested in owning one. Sure, there are performance-orientated versions of these things, but they don’t tick all the same boxes that a performance car offers up. A colab between the Toyota Engineering teams at Toyota R&D and Calty Design Studio resulted in what you see here, a 2024 Toyota Tacoma that’s been tailored for street instead of off-road, and the results is this one-off concept called the X-Runner Concept. As you can see, changes are plentiful. Power comes from a modified twin-turbcocharged 3.4-litre i-FORCE V6 producing 310 kW and 650 Nm of torque. There’s a Tundra with an electronic locking differential. The track width was increased by 8cm and the frame was strengthened. Tundra air-suspension was fitted and up front, the upper and lower arms were lengthened to match the Tundra’s suspension geometry. At the rear, the upper and lower arm lengths were increased to mate with Tundra’s rear geometry. The springs were stiffened and a set of custom-valved, 2.5-inch Bilstein shocks are in play. One-off 21-inch Lacks Enterprises carbon fibre wheels with forged aluminum centers can be found in the corners, wrapped in Michelin Sport tyres. The X-Runner is in Toyota’s Speedway Blue and also has a matt black finish on the bonnet, A-pillars and roof while red accents complement the bonnet’s lines, scoop and wheel hubs. Inside ther are paddle shifters, and custom X-Runner accents.

“There is a Tacoma for everyone, with eight grades in the 2024 Tacoma lineup,” said Mike Tripp, group vice president, Toyota Marketing. “This new X-Runner concept really shows that TRD is about performance, about going fast… It shows the range of the platform and what we could do if we took the Tacoma beyond off-road and everyday capabilities, slammed it, and gave it a little street cred,” Tripp said. When asked about the inspiration behind building an X-Runner Concept for the SEMA Show, Adam Rabinowitz, chief designer at Toyota’s Calty Design Research, Inc. shared a part of the team’s thought process. “There were lots of street trucks in the early 2000s and they all faded, so on the one hand, this was a curiosity check to see if there is any market for street trucks at all, or if the market has entirely shifted to what we see today—tough, rugged, lifted vehicles,” Rabinowitz said. “On the heels of the Tacoma launch, we wanted to showcase the diverse possibilities of the new truck’s architecture,“ said Sheldon Brown, chief engineer, Toyota Motor North America. “The TGNA-F platform allows us to efficiently build something this cool in a fraction of the development time it would normally take. A project like this is why you get into the automotive business.“