Could your Hilux park like a Yaris?
All double-cab bakkies have a flaw, but it’s one that could easily be remedied…
The “luxury” double-cab has become South Africa’s family vehicle of choice. Evidence supporting this statement is abundant – the Toyota Hilux continues to be the local market’s most popular vehicle.
With the disappearance of traditional sedans and hatchbacks, the double-cab bakkie is now a tremendously popular urban family vehicle. Which, to be honest, is not what it was ever designed to be.
Trace the origin story of the Hilux – those first solid-front-axle double cabs were all about getting work crews to inhospitable locations; they were most certainly NOT meant to serve in school lift clubs. Suffice to say family-use demands have shaped the specifications of South African bakkies, but several foundational issues remain.
The Volkswagen Amarok demonstrated that passenger-car switchgear and cabin design could create a more liveable interior. The Wolfsburg-based brand also championed more intelligent automatic transmissions for greater driving comfort in urban environments. Even the most creative and colourful descriptions fail to capture the awfulness of those 1st-generation 4-speed automatic double-cab bakkie transmissions.
This is what bakkies were engineered to do, but few of them seem to venture far from the tarmac these days.
The problem with a bakkie as a passenger vehicle
Select any of the latest double-cab bakkies in our market and you’ll find reasonable seat comfort, comprehensive safety systems and automatic transmissions that do their utmost to shift gears in such a way that it won’t test your neck strength. But there are two noteworthy problems that all bakkie engineering teams have failed to address: parking and understeer.
Bakkies are growing larger with each generation. The original Toyota double-cab was 370 mm shorter than the current four-door Hilux. Parking bays and urban infrastructure haven’t changed much since the 1980s. And all the parking sensors and field-of-view cameras in the world don’t help trim a gargantuan turning circle.
Double-cab bakkies have become longer and now do most of their mileage in cities, although they remain designed for work and operating off-road. This makes them genuinely awful vehicles to navigate around any parking infrastructure. But there is a solution… and it’s one that could make double-cab bakkies a lot easier to drive and park around town – and safer (at freeway speeds).
A rear-axle steering system doing its job to “virtually'”shorten the new S-Class’ wheelbase.
The technology is proven – and hardly new
Mercedes-Benz might have failed dramatically with its X-Class bakkie, but the S-Class grand saloon remains the benchmark luxury car, not least a technology showcase for the entire automotive industry. And, as with all other vehicles, the S-Class has grown larger with each generation – which has increased the likelihood of bumper scuffs and embarrassing multi-turn parking manoeuvres for wealthy customers who, as we know, are incredibly image-conscious.
Aware that its S-Class customers demand not to be embarrassed by low-speed driving issues, Mercedes-Benz engineers have equipped the Three-pointed Star’s halo model with 4-wheel steering. It is hardly a new technology. Japanese car companies offered it as long ago as the 1980s.
In sympathy with customers trying to survive the parkers’ hell that is Paris, Renault added 4-wheel steering to its Laguna back in 2008. That technology would come to South Africa with the very beautiful – and rare – Laguna Coupe, in 2010.
Honda had rear-wheel steering on its 1988-model-year Prelude.
It makes so much sense on a large vehicle
Broadly speaking, there was never much of a need for four-wheel-steering in a country with abundant parking. But nudging a Mercedes-Benz A-Class into a Sandton City or V&A Waterfront parking bay is unlikely to cause as much anxiety as doing the same with a double-cab bakkie.
As more urban families home a bakkie, they have little choice but to become reacquainted with the art of 3-point-turning. Four-wheel steering might be superfluous and cost-prohibitive for South African compact crossover and hatchback buyers, where some skill and anticipation will solve most parking issues. But even the most confident driver has been humbled into multiturn choreography by a double-cab.
Adding four-wheel steering would dramatically reduce a double cab’s turning circle – a frustration most owners have to tolerate daily. It would make these large family vehicles much less taxing to drive, considering their owners’ daily routines.
Some steering at the rear has a huge influence
To what extent could four-wheel steering reduce a bakkie’s turning circle? The benchmark figure is 22%. And that’s a lot if you consider the tiny margins for error when you need to park in minuscule parking bays and on congested streets.
Beyond the low-speed manoeuvring benefits, four-wheel steering can make vehicles more stable at higher speeds. This is especially true when executing an emergency lane change – a driving intervention that is often the undoing of any double-cab design.
Bakkies have inherently poor weight distribution, making them prone to severe understeer. Where a balanced performance car or hot hatchback has close to 50/50 weight distribution, most double cabs are very unbalanced, with between 60-70% of their weight on the front axle. And that means they’re prone to exhibit pretty severe understeer when you pile into corners in a hurry.
Four-wheel steering can angle the rear wheels in the same direction as the steering wheel is turning and, in doing so, reduce understeer.
If four-wheel steering offers significant driving benefits, why hasn’t it become an option on double-cab bakkies? That’s a good question, because the system isn’t that complicated.
GMC’s huge American bakkies, showed what can be done with four-wheel steering.
What would you pay to have your Hilux turn like a Yaris?
In 2002, GM introduced Quadrasteer on its large bakkies. The system employed active tie-in rods to counter-angle the rear wheels by up to 15-degrees at low speeds, dramatically reducing the turning circle. By 2005, it was discontinued.
And why? The Quadrasteer option added 136 kg of weight, but, more importantly, it was enormously expensive. In South African equivalent pricing, Quadrasteer was a R56 000 option in 2002, which would be R160 000 in 2022 money.
GM eventually discounted Quadrasteer to R10 000 in its final production year (2005), which inflates to R28 000 in today’s money. And for the sake of argument, that price is an average option or trim upgrade on most double-cab bakkies.
Fail in 2002… but a win in 2022?
The weight penalty and prohibitive cost were tabled as issues that forced GM to kill its Quadrasteer option. But in truth, bakkie customers don’t have a problem with either weight or cost when it relates to optional extras.
If you scrutinise the specification sheet and options list of any new double-cab range, you will invariably find a variety of marginally pointless extras, all of which add cost and weight. And demand for double-cabs and all their associated accessories remain immense… with the average double-cab bakkie being a R700 000 vehicle, a theoretical R30 000 four-wheel-steering option would be very fairly priced.
Imagine a new Hilux with the turning circle and low-speed driving agility of a Yaris. Now that, rather than silly graphics, nudge bars, roller shutters etc (which can’t improve the double-cab driving experience), would be an extra worth having!
