The story
The first 4Runner was less designed than improvised: take Toyota's redesigned 1984 Hilux 4x4 pickup, give the bed a fibreglass lid and a back seat (sometimes), and ship it to America. It went on sale in the US in May 1984 as a 1984½ model — two doors, a four-cylinder, a five-speed and, for its first two seasons, a solid front axle on leaf springs. Four decades on it is the 4Runner people call 'pure', and the one Hagerty says can't be ignored now that clean examples keep getting more expensive.
A PICKUP WITH A HAT
Toyota had already seen the idea work. Between 1981 and 1983 Winnebago and Toyota turned short-bed Hilux 4x4s into the Trekker — a fibreglass-lined bed, an extra seat and a fibreglass top — and Curbside Classic counts only around 1,500 of them. The factory version arrived as the Hilux Surf in Japan in October 1983 and as the 4Runner in North America a few months later, just as the FJ40 Land Cruiser left the US market and the small-SUV class filled up with the S-10 Blazer, Bronco II and Jeep Cherokee.
Hagerty describes the details that make owners grin: a rear roof held on by 14 bolts, a standard rear roll bar, and a power rear window that drops into the tailgate. SR5s added an altimeter and inclinometer on the dash, a rear seat, strobe-stripe graphics and chrome wheels; the base DX often came without a rear seat at all, and Toyota never fitted rear shoulder belts.
ENGINES, AND THE AXLE ARGUMENT
The 1984½ trucks used the carburetted 2.4-litre 22R making 96 hp, paired only with a five-speed. Fuel injection arrived for 1985 as the 22R-E — Wikipedia lists 116 hp — and 1986 brought the 135 hp 22R-TE turbo, mostly sold with the automatic in SR5s and far rarer than the plain 22R-E. For 1988 the 3.0-litre 3VZ-E V6 joined the range, rated at 145–150 hp depending on the source. Hagerty's verdict on the whole run: 0–60 times improved 'from months to weeks to about 12 seconds'.
The bigger change came underneath. For 1986 the solid front axle was replaced by independent front suspension with a three-inch-wider track, which made the truck calmer on the road and, by most accounts, a little less heroic off it. That split defines the generation today: 1984–85 trucks are the solid-axle purist's choice, while 1986–89 trucks ride better and share their front end with the second generation. Both keep a leaf-sprung rear axle that Wikipedia notes was never upgraded for the extra weight of the seats and top — so sagging is normal.
WHY IT MATTERS NOW
In its own time the N60 was a slow starter: US sales were 6,498 in 1984 and dipped below 4,000 in 1987, before jumping to 20,880 in 1988 and 36,927 in calendar 1989 (a figure that includes the first 2nd gens). Today the story has flipped. Hagerty reported average values of $8,400 in #3 condition, $13,700 in #2 and $21,100 in #1, with Bring a Trailer sales of a 100,000-mile 1984 SR5 at $19,250, and found that millennials and Gen-Xers made up a far larger share of 4Runner insurance quotes than of the market overall.
The Autopian's David Tracy goes further, naming the 1985 — fuel-injected, solid-axled, convertible-topped and under 3,500 lb — his perfect 4Runner. The catch is survival. Open tops let water in, floors and quarter panels are not reproduced, and Hagerty notes that original seats and upholstery are close to unobtainable. Mechanically, though, the 22R-family engines are among the easiest Toyota ever built, and LC Engineering still runs a whole 1984–1989 4Runner catalogue.
THE AFTERMATH
For 1990 Toyota replaced it with a four-door, fixed-roof second generation that kept the independent front end and swapped the rear leafs for coils. The removable top never returned, and by the third generation the pickup-with-a-lid idea had vanished entirely. The first gen became something else: the cheap, simple base for solid-axle swaps, V8 conversions and camper builds — Expedition Portal's classifieds once listed a 1985 SR5 on Old Man Emu springs with a FlipPac pop-up roof for $8,000. Nobody is building them that way from new any more, which is rather the point.
SIDEBAR · BEFORE THE 4RUNNER
The Trekker: Winnebago's 4Runner prototype you could buy
Before Toyota built its own 4Runner, Winnebago did a version for it. Curbside Classic describes how short-bed Toyota 4x4 pickups were sent to Winnebago, which lined the bed with fibreglass, added a seat and fitted a fibreglass top; 'only some 1500 Trekkers were made and sold, between 1981 and 1983'.
Its true origins are hazy, and Curbside Classic found no evidence that the Trekker's top was meant to come off. But the concept — Hilux 4x4 plus enclosed back with seats — is exactly what Toyota put into production for 1984. LC Engineering still lists the 1981–1983 Trekker as its own model in its parts catalogue.
