CLASS ACTION

Before we climb behind the wheel, let’s go back to early June and a big showroom tucked into a quiet backlot of an inner Sydney suburb. Inside, Hino Australia’s leading lights were gathered, eager in this pre-Delta diaspora to showcase their new series of heavy-duty hopefuls. To be blunt, though, none of this was particularly surprising. After all, in the wake of new 300-series light-duty models and, later, advanced standard and wide cab versions of a newly crafted medium-duty 500-series range, it was plainly apparent that Hino would eventually follow suit with a completely reworked range of 700-series heavy-duty trucks.

What did surprise, however, was just how far Hino had gone in its bid to make the 700-series a far more competitive and appealing line-up: a line-up entirely capable of not only turning the screws on its Japanese rivals, but also giving the Europeans good cause to keep a wary eye. And, clearly, an obvious push to expand the entire range with a strong emphasis on heavy-duty rigid models.

To anyone who has been watching Hino’s Australian performance for a decade or two, it actually appeared that Toyota’s truck brand had finally honed in on its heavy-duty horizons and, as we subsequently reported, “… on first impression this is a heavy-duty lineup far beyond anything Hino has ever before offered in any weight class.”

For starters, the brand’s own nine-litre engine was being introduced to the heavy-duty range for the first time in an obvious bid to bolster its rigid ranks. Joining the existing 13-litre engine, both displacements meet Euro 6 emissions standards through the combined effects of a selective catalytic reduction system,