Silver Bullet

ONCA Off-road Products doesn’t mess around when they build a vehicle to show off the company’s 15-year experience in producing hardcore 4x4 accessories for hardcore 4x4 applications. This new Toyota Hilux is no different. We joined ONCA frontmen and brothers Len and Lee Nel at the Moegatle 4x4 trails – one of SA’s so-called terror trails – to put this bakkie through its off-road paces.

The ONCA Off-road Products factory in Bredell in Johannesburg has been in a state of flux in recent times. Not only has the company had to expand its floor space to meet high demand for its in-house developed and manufactured products, main frontmen and brothers Len and Lee Nel have been hard at work creating a special Toyota Hilux.

The lads spend a long time designing new products. They design on paper, they build a mock-up, they cut and manufacture, they fit… and then they chop and change again, until they are satisfied.

This is also one of the main reasons why ONCA has become a success story in the competitive 4×4 accessory market: the brothers’ attention to detail, and insistence on getting things just right.

This Hilux is a prime example of what ONCA can do. When Toyota recently introduced a new front bumper for the Hilux – curing the Hilux’s reputed overbite nose – the lads had to pull out all the stops and create something completely different, something that would make people stop in their tracks, point and shout: “Look at that Hilux!”

Says Lee Nel, the main protagonist behind the build: “When Toyota introduced the new front bumper with the Dakar limited edition model, we decided we’d create our own interpretation of the Dakar theme, of what a road-going Dakar version could look like. A Toyota Hilux with a rally look but one that is still highly capable in a tough off-road environment.”

In the end, the brand new bumper took six weeks to develop. They call it the Baja XT bull bar.