ISIS' Favorite: The Toyota Pickup

Toyota Hilux pickups, an overseas model similar to the Toyota Tacoma, and Toyota Land Cruisers have become fixtures in videos of the ISIS campaign in Iraq, Syria and Libya, with their truck beds loaded with heavy weapons and cabs jammed with terrorists. 

ISIS propaganda videos show gunmen patrolling Syrian streets in what appear to be older and newer model white Hilux pick-ups bearing the black caliphate seal and crossing Libya in long caravans of gleaming tan Toyota Land Cruisers. When ISIS soldiers paraded through the center of Raqqa, more than two-thirds of the vehicles were the familiar white Toyotas with the black emblems. 

The Internet has gone crazy with a particularly odd conspiracy theory: somehow, Toyota has been supplying the fighters of the Islamic State with pickup trucks. Those making the claim, including the Iraqi Ambassador to the United States, point out that the Toyota trucks ISIS fighters drive in Libya, Iraq, and Syria often appear brand-new. 

Toyota has a “strict policy to not sell vehicles to potential purchasers who may use or modify them for paramilitary or terrorist activities." It is impossible for the company to track vehicles that have been stolen, or have been bought and re-sold by middlemen.

Is Toyota somehow responsible for outfitting ISIS with pickup trucks? No, of course it's not. A combination of Japanese consumer tastes, a lucrative worldwide used car market, thermodynamics, and sheer manufacturing output pretty much guarantees any organization that subsists off found, "liberated," and captured goods will standardize on white pickup trucks. The region has plenty of white pickup trucks for ISIS to acquire without ordering them new and direct from Japan.

Simply put: It's practically guaranteed that any paramilitary force in the Middle East will standardize on white Toyota pickup trucks.


The Toyota/ISIS conspiracy might be a harmless, silly rumor were jobs not at stake. Any association with a group that burns people alive and chops off heads is not conducive to good business. Through no fault of its own, Toyota's good reputation is taking a beating. The irony is, despite all the damage ISIS has done throughout the Middle East, it's ill-informed reports from the West that are causing the damage this time.