Toyota Is Building A Sweet Tacoma-Based Camper For SEMA

Toyota has been building trucks that are ready to go off-road and enjoy the outdoors for decades. Back in the 70s, Toyota built a very small camper on its truck with a company called Chinook. That camper had a pop-up fabric roof and let people enjoy the great outdoors all they wanted.

The coolest event that happens for automotive fans each year is SEMA in Las Vegas. This year at SEMA, Toyota will show off a new Tacoma-based truck camper dubbed Tacozilla. It will be reminiscent of those Chinook campers of old but with a significantly updated modern twist.

Tiny homes are something fashionable today that many people choose because they can purchase them and not have a mortgage. Tiny homes also allow people to travel anywhere and have a home with them. In the video shown below, Toyota team manager Marty Schwerter says the new camper truck will be a "micro house," hinting that it will be extremely small.

The original Chinook camper had a long overhang that prevented the camper from driving on many off-road services due to compromised departure angles. In the modern Tacozilla, the rear overhang will be minimized so the truck can still go off-road. While the old camper was tall and square, the new SEMA build will have curves and will rise approximately four feet above the truck.

Schwerter says in the video the truck that is the core of the build is a TRD Tacoma with a manual transmission. The video does show a rendering hinting at what the finished product will look like, and it has retro style despite its modern components. The video is listed as Episode 1, indicating future episodes are coming, so we should see more of the build ahead of SEMA.