A mere 495 gathered on the Atlantis dunes outside Cape Town in 2010, making yesterday’s assembly of 1440 of the trusty utes easily a GWD Toyota world record for the most number of Toyota Hiluxes in one place.
Organisers said they were blown away by the uptake of the call to gather, after people from the deepest South to the Far North got in their Hiluxes and headed for Kingston.
The rugged and reliable Hilux has been the go-to workhorse of farmers and tradespeople in New Zealand since the 1970s.
Several successful advertising campaigns endeared it further to the general public, particularly the odd-couple comedy advertisements of the 1980s featuring country guy Barry Crump and his city mate Scotty (played by Lloyd Scott), and a 1990s advertisement that resulted in "bugger" becoming part of the vernacular.
Current owners came from all directions yesterday.
"It was pretty unbelievable, to be honest," Ms Lynch said.
"It originally started as a cool concept and then it got to a ‘we’ll put it out there, see what kind of uptake we get’, then the uptake was just through the roof. It just went viral so fast."
There were old Hiluxes, new ones, rusty ones and even some company vehicles.
The oldest Hilux belonged to Riverton man Kieran Armistead, who said he bought the former farm truck, which had clearly seen better days, three years ago. The 1978 ute had been sitting in a woolshed for 20 years.
"We definitely got a few looks driving up here, but she still goes pretty all right. It was awesome to be involved."
Ms Lynch said some drivers opted to drive in convoy on the way to the mass meet-up — one lot coming from the BP petrol station in Cromwell, another from Garston.
"I’m not going to lie — it was pretty cool to take a minute and look out on to the state highway and just see Hiluxes lined up coming from both directions."
