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Toyota HiLux bullbar designers use their skills to make medical masks

The Australians who created even tougher versions of the Toyota HiLux are designing emergency medical equipment.


The team of Australians who design heavy duty accessories for the Toyota HiLux ute are now helping to make medical equipment to assist health authorities in the battle against the coronavirus.

While local manufacturing of the Toyota Camry came to an end in 2017, the Japanese car maker retained a Melbourne-based design and engineering team to develop accessories for the Toyota HiLux and other off-road vehicles.

The same facility that developed the heavy duty hardware for Toyota HiLux Rugged X (pictured above and below) and Rogue editions – as well as bullbars and other accessories – is using its half-a-dozen in-house 3D printers to help make medical face masks. 

The 3D printers can carve out of solid pieces of plastic new components much quicker than normal manufacturing procedures, though the finished products tend to last months as an interim measure, rather than years.

Toyota Australia, vice president, sales and marketing, Sean Hanley, told CarAdvice: “Our product planning team has designed a medical facemark that we can 3D print. We are beginning talks with the government taskforce to see how we may be able to assist. Because 3D printing can be shared quite broadly, it depends how many (other devices) are out there to get the job done.”

Toyota Australia joins Walkinshaw Automotive Group (the parent company of Holden Special Vehicles) and the Erebus V8 Supercar team among local automotive suppliers and niche manufacturers who have offered use of their 3D printers to expedite the manufacture of temporary breathing apparatus and medical masks.

Ford, which has approximately 1500 engineers and designers still working in Australia, says it has also been in contact with the federal and Victorian governments “to offer our help and the expertise of our team to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic”.

They join the seven Formula One teams in the UK and General Motors and Ford in the US (pictured above), who have offered the use of similar equipment and services,

As this article was published, it was unclear if any Australian states or the federal government have taken up the offer of assistance from outside suppliers to use 3D equipment to manufacture specialist short-term equipment.

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Joshua Dowling

Joshua Dowling has been a motoring journalist for more than 20 years, spending most of that time working for The Sydney Morning Herald (as motoring editor and one of the early members of the Drive team) and News Corp Australia. He joined CarAdvice / Drive in 2018, and has been a World Car of the Year judge for more than 10 years.

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