cant stop thinking about this video
For context this was in response to someone saying their cybertruck was heavy duty
oh no no NO no no I am sorry my dear @thebirdtm you are NOT underselling one of the most seminal pieces of television of my entire childhood like that on MY watch.
"How is claiming they drowned a Hilux possibly underselling it" GREAT question.
To start with a little disclaimer, Top Gear's Hilux did not start off, as in the video above, in pristine condition. It started off with nigh-on 300k kms (for you yankees, that's about 8.4 million Boeing 737 wingspans) and a condition to match.
And it's only once careless driving around town yielded zilch in given shits...
(look, I found a local newspaper picturing it being driven around!)
...that they decided to drown it. Now, the underselling part: if you told me that they drowned a pickup the first place my mind would go to would be "driving it through a river a bit too deep for it, perhaps as deep as its height, until it stalls and then tugging it back out. You will concede that's rather different from tying it down on the seashore with the second highest tide in the world...
...and leaving it there until it engulfs the whole truck...
...only for the ropes to snap...
...and for the truck to be lost to the tides for FIVE HOURS.
(and for those wondering, yes, just as promised, well within an hour and the mandatory limits of basic tools and no spare parts, up the mechanic made the thing fire and away the presenter drove it - I must imagine doing a number on his clothes in the process.)
Oh also I would have mentioned the caravan.
Or at least the wrecking ball.
But hey, at least the fire was mentioned.
Still, I feel it's criminal to leave out how they celebrated it surviving all it did: by parking it at the top of a 23 story building for all to see! :)
Wait NO-
Well, that was uncalled for. Given what it survived, it deserved to rest in a museum instead of being unceremoniously cleared out with the other chunks of public housing that buried it.
Or at least, given that buried it wasn't...
...to be tumbled down from the rubble utop which it sat...
...and be fueled up.
"be fueled up", pfft, what for?, I hear you say. And you are right.
Look at that thing, you say.
Let's be serious now, however pretty of a story it would be that's not a truck that will do anything remotely in the ballpark of firing up, let alone running.
And again, you are right.
The battery was disconnected.
Sorted that, tho
"You can't be serious." Oh darling I sure can! "Well the presenters can't then" no no, I assure you, it lived. Go see it for yourself! It's at the National Motor Museum in Beaulieau, England!
I grew up watching Top Gear and it shaped me in many ways. My adoration of old Toyota Hiluxes is one of them.
My dad has one of these fucking things. He and my uncle ran a motor cycle club that would fairly regularly do off roading mountain routes for dirt bikes. he was the resident EMT, and this beast of a truck was the off road rescue vehicle- for obvious reasons. While it never endured the absolute satanic level of abuse as the top gear one, it did pretty regularly get driven into huge bolders, crashed into trees, flipped or rolled on more than one occasion. It was equipped with a roll cage (for the reasons mentioned above), 5pt harness seats and was probably made of more bondo than metal by the time he and my mom split. It was also lifted- so It could drive over most of the bullshit up in the mountains more easily. I mention the lift because I need you to understand that this thing's center of gravity was..HIGH and it was VERY prone to tipping over, and given the wrong turn on these tiny ass moutain dirt access roads, very frequently ROLLED over or down into a ravine.
I have first hand experience of being inside said toyota hilux as it flipped and slid down a 45 degree embankment on its roof and walked away with out a scratch. do that in a cybercuck and you'd be full of glass, at the least. I've watched the same truck get righted, hood banged back down into latch and then get loaded up with an injured biker and their bike into the flat bed, and then proceed to DRIVE BACK UP THE EMBANKMENT IT ROLLED DOWN. Cybercucks ain't got shit on the Hilux.
