During a visit to Prescott on April 8 I had the chance to stop by AT Overland Equipment, and Martyn was generous enough to give me a tour. I saw a whole bunch of Tacoma Habitats in production or getting staged for production and we discussed a number of details about their design and construction. Lou happened to be stopping by with his 2nd Gen Tacoma access cab with the Habitat prototype and he gave us a good look at it.
Everyone likes pictures, right? Here's a look at the Habitat prototype from different angles and in more detail than some of the other images.
A few observations:
1. A number of features related to latches and catches will change for the production version, as will some of the details around the tent perimeter. The tailgate will have changes to use gas struts for opening.
2. The Habitat prototype was opened quickly for the photos, so it wasn't fully deployed (in case some of the edges look like they haven't been pulled into place)
3. I'm 6' 6" (198cm). I had inches above my head standing full height. The Habitat is definitely high-ceilinged!
4. The open-to-the-rear configuration has pros and cons. A light shower came by as we were talking, and it was very nice to be sitting on the tailgate or standing under the canopy to be out of the weather. The downside noted by Lou, a former Flippac owner, is that the overall parking/campsite footprint is almost twice as big and this takes extra care to manage.
5. The Habitat is a nice-looking product. The composite honeycomb/aluminum construction works well for a product like this.
6. As noted elsewhere in this thread, AT confirmed that Habitat versions for other platforms might be possible in the future, depending on sufficient demand to reconfigure the tooling. A plus point would be sizes that span several platforms (in other words, pickups with common bed sizes would make it easier to get critical mass for design and production).
Thanks to Martyn and Lou for the time spent talking about the Habitat. As a final image, here's the parking lot at AT -- pretty interesting in its own right.
