The Most Sinister Toyota Sienna On The Block

• June 29, 2015
• Story By
  Ali Mansour

  Toyota has just unveiled its future plans for the company’s North American headquarters, which will be built in Plano, Texas. While it’s great to see the company setting up shop in a big way in the U.S., the more exciting news (to us at least), was the photo we got of the company’s Sienna Ultimate Utility Vehicle or UUV that’s destined for its big unveil at SEMA (Specialty Equipment Market Association) in November. Before you get too excited about going Mad Max with your wife’s Sienna, you might want to look in a little closer to the setup. Ultimately, it’s really just a Tacoma chassis with a Sienna minivan body grafted on top. It doesn’t really take away from the wow factor, but it does mean that Sienna isn’t going to have any off-road suspension or armor components coming to market anytime soon. With so many legacy off-road vehicles in Toyota’s portfolio, it’s definitely nice to see them willing to do something that’s a little odd and definitely out of the box. The fact that they stuck a unitbody van atop a pick chassis also means they are paying more attention to the Texas surroundings we thought! There was little to no technical information released about the rig, but a few things are pretty obvious from the photo. Peeking from under the front of the chassis appears to be a set of remote-reservoir King coilover shocks with quick adjusters, which isn’t standard Tacoma equipment. The Tacoma’s original leaf-sprung suspension has also been replaced with what appears to be a multilink setup with trailing arm lowers. If you look close, you can make out what appears to be the bottom of a coilover out back as well. With such an immense aftermarket support for the Tacoma platform, it’s hard to tell if the front bumper has been modified from an existing aftermarket one or if it was all made in house. The front door handles being moved next to the front fender is a good indicator that the van now has a suicide door setup. This was likely necessary due to the modified Sienna wheel arches and external armor/fender structure. One obvious mod is the use of LT305/55R20 Nitto Trail Grapplers. This tire size is a little over 33 inches tall and a tad over 12.50 inches wide to put some perspective on the setup. While we typically like a slightly smaller wheel ratio for that given tire size, it appears that a big brake kit may have influenced the 20-inch wheel choice. We’ll get more info on this crazy Toyota Sienna in few months. Until then, here’s some eye candy of some heavily modified for E-series vans from our friends at Ujoint Off-Road.