Toyota's game-changing ute takes shape in new renders: Forget the new HiLux, Toyota says the 'Stout' will "take the market by storm"

Toyota's incoming Stout small truck has taken shape in new renders, with the baby-HiLux looking like the kind of ute that would make a huge impact in Australia.

These renders are but an unofficial digital creation, produced for kolesa.ru, but it looks pretty much exactly how we expect a Toyota's car-based ute to appear, with the renders borrowing from the Corolla Cross.

Development of a Stout, or a version of it, has been confirmed by Toyota, and specifically by the brand's South African executives, who have promised it will be tough, not and EV, and will 'take the market by storm'.

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“We believe it will take the market by storm and are still doing a lot of development around it,” Toyota South Africa senior vice president for sales and marketing, Leon Theron, told local publication IOL.

The comments suggest the new model will actually be closer to a one-tonne HiLux in payload capacity than originally thought, with the brand more focused on offering an affordable answer to the HiLux than it is on competing in a particular size class.

"Something that’s in the same space but more affordable than the Hilux that we’re looking at releasing around 2025 or 2026," Toyota South Africa's vice president of marketing and communications, Glenn Crompton, told IOL.

Toyota in the US has been bold on the potential of a mini-HiLux, too, where Cooper Ericksen, Toyota USA's VP of product planning and strategy, told US publication Automotive News last year that "there is space" in its line-up for a model that would sit below the Tundra and Tacoma or HiLux.

Eriksen went on to detail just what a baby HiLux would offer, suggesting it would take on more of an "SUV with a bed" philosophy, with plenty of cabin space for passengers.

"We probably need something a little more spacious on the inside, more of an SUV-with-a-bed concept, so it's really dialling it in," he said.

"And the more that Ford sells, frankly, and the more Hyundai sells, the more we'll be able to get good research on who these customers are, why they want this vehicle, and we'll see if that's the space we want to enter into."