I asked this about the Toyota truck in another thread, but didn’t see an answer.
What is the proper pronunciation of Hilux? My dad had one, way before they became the Tacoma. We pronounced it ‘high-lux’, as in ‘high luxury’. But I’m pretty sure I’ve heard it pronounced ‘hee-lux’ on Top Gear. This is the pronunciation suggested by the spelling; but ‘high-lux’ makes more sense for a car (even if that car is a truck).
According to Wikipedia, the name does come from “high luxury”. The Japanese transliteration is “hai rakkusu.”
Top Gear often intentionally mispronounces car names for comedic effect, though I don’t know if that’s the case here.
In case it isn’t clear, the hai in hai rakkusu is like our word “high.” And the u’s are often devoiced, and are only added because Japanese is syllabic (always following a consonant with a vowel) so you get something that sounds more like “high rucks.” Throw in the r/l thing, and you realize they’re saying “high-lucks” the best they can in Japanese.