Toyota Tundra – Making Up For Lost Time

this is a ground-up redsign of the Tundra which means it’s riding on a new chassis. It’s the TNGA-F platform and that’s a big deal because it’s managed to shave off 400(ish) lbs while upping rigidity by 20%

Foreign this is the new toyota tundra and we’ve covered the launch and debut of this thing to an almost nauseating degree then paulo went out to texas to drive it at the launch event but now i’ve had a chance to spend a week with it and really see what it’s like to live with so let’s hop in finally getting to spend some time with one of the biggest launches from

Last year and that’s the new toyota tundra this of course is a brand new ground up truck and with it comes a myriad of new changes so let’s do some housekeeping at the top here like i said this is a ground up redesign of the tundra which means it’s riding on a new chassis it’s the tnga f platform and it’s a big deal because it’s managed to shave 400 pounds while

Upping the rigidity by 20 percent and a new platform usually means new engines too no more 5.7 liter naturally aspirated i-4s v8 the new i force generation of engines is a 3.5 liter twin turbo v6 you also get a 10 speed automatic gearbox in both the engine and the transmission come from lexus of course they’ve been completely reworked and remapped and re-geared

For truck duty to fit in this tundra now it’s not the hybrid iforce max engine but we flick it up into sport here put our foot down and it makes some good power 389 horsepower and 479 pound-feet of torque to be exact the hybrid offers quite a bit more power so we’ll be excited to try that later this year however the whole point of going to a smaller engine was

To improve fuel economy and it has kinda the epa rates the spec at 19 combined which i’ve been getting closer to 16 but that’s a lot of idling for filming so yes it’s more powerful than the old v8 it’s more efficient than the old v8 and it has a decent sound to it it’s not a low v8 grumble but it does it’s best to mimic that old sound power delivery delivery is

Is very smooth it’s a nice application of rolls on the power well the transmission shifts pretty smooth i do notice a little bit of clunkiness at lower speeds from first to second gear or going from reverse to drive but overall it’s pretty smooth experience and between you and me i noticed a little bit worse in the lexus lx that we tested the other week and that

Has the same powertrain as this ultimately though shifting back to this tundra it’s a nice it’s a nice powertrain setup at the front here the engine the transmission work really well the 10 speed in here i think works a little bit better than the 10 speed that you would get in the f-150 it’s a nice smooth power application the fitting of a limited badge on the

Side of the truck this is a limited trim but it also has the trd off-road package what this results in is this truck getting a lot of the off-road goodies we’ve come to love from the toyotas it’s still a part-time 4×4 system that’s the only deficiency as opposed to competitors like the ram and the ford however you get the fantastic multi-terrain select you get

Multi-terrain monitor you get rear auto lsds and also a locker on the back which is fantastic and you didn’t have before and of course you get bash plates underneath and upgraded bilstein suspension we’ll wait for the full trd pro later this year to take it on road america’s off-road course but given my intimate knowledge of that course i don’t have any shadow

Of a doubt that this thing would do perfectly fine on that course i do however want to talk about drivability uh and the more on-road manners that this thing brings the tundra made a huge change for this generation of course you’ve got dual wishbone front suspension but the big change comes in the five link or the five link multi-link rear suspension out back

With coil springs rather than leaf springs and what it’s done is transformed the ride on this tundra from something that’s very typical truck to something that’s not quite raptor smooth but very very smooth toyota is using a dual wishbone front suspension for added front end refinement but the big story is the five link rear suspension that’s replaced the leaf

Springs their other truck is still using drum brakes in the rear so this is super progressive from toyota with this new suspension you’ll get a little less jitteriness over some road imperfections because well this is still a truck and i don’t have anything in the bed but overall it’s a much more composed ride and it’s an improvement that you can feel in other

Places on the truck the steering feels more connected you have different drive modes you have normal eco and sport and they control the character of the car overall though it’s a thoroughly more modern truck but it is still a truck which means we have to cover truck stuff towing max is out for this limited 4×4 crewmax five and a half foot bed configuration at

11 120 pounds and payload maxes out at one thousand seven hundred and forty pounds but this isn’t a one-trick pony so let’s step outside and talk about some important details okay then by the wheel and this thing drives pretty well i’m actually very impressed with it and i think it looks even better not the only one that thinks that everywhere that i’ve taken

This thing over the past week i have been stopped by people maybe it’s because it’s brand new maybe it’s because toyota only releases a new version of a car every three decades i don’t know but it’s gotten a lot of attention and it’s it’s kind of funny to see like what cars we test get more or less attention this has gotten more attention than the mclaren gt that

We drove last summer but anyway let’s talk about the way that this thing looks we have it in barcelona rojo or barcelona red i think this is a great red uh better than the solar octane i think that the trd pro comes in although it’s a little bit of orangish tinge to it but anyway this has a really nice kind of aggressive muscular look to it there’s bulging in the

Hood you have a typical toyota emblem in your grill but you do have trd stamped up here because this is after all the trd off-road package equipped on this limited trim the grill itself there’s really no getting away from this right here it’s just the nature of the plastic grill and the weave that they’ve done here but you do have led lights down in here for fogs you

Have tundra stamped in your lower bumper you’ve got parking sensors and of course i think it paulo knight neither of us are really a fan of chrome i wouldn’t go so far as i really call this chrome it’s got kind of more of a satin finish but it is a nice little accent to kind of break up the red and the black around here you have really interesting headlights they’re

Like a triple beam kind of thing and you can see the hardware like the screws and the hex bolts that go into you know putting these diodes together it’s a sequential led here and you have a nice little vent down here moving around to the side though again there’s a lot of design elements going on there’s a lot of bulging and body lines and creases to give it kind

Of an interesting look the last one was very soft very round this is very much the other direction you do have scratchy black plastic wheel molding typical for something like this especially for the trd off-road package but you do have trd pro wheels wrapped in falcon wild peak all-terrain tires and of course as we continue down the profile we have more chrome

Accents this is more what i would consider classic chrome because it actually does have a more chrome shiny finish to it you also have chrome door handles and that is of course because you have the limited trim the only other bit of chrome down here is of course the tundra badge on the door which i like i think it’s kind of nice you have this like floating roof

Type thing where your a-pillar is black but this is where paul and i differ a little bit talking about the the rock rail it’s not really a running board you can’t really step on it’s not going to help that way but it will protect your body along with some of the bash plates underneath if you do go off-roading in this thing because it is a long truck so breakover

Is a concern moving on to the back though you have your fuel door here and then more interest increasing and elements of design on your bed you do have trd 4×4 off-road sticker on the back here you could peel it off if you really want to but then we talk about one of the coolest things that you have on the trd or excuse the tundra you have a bed release in your

Sequential tail lights the taillights are sequential by the way they look really cool you have a manual step to get into your bed the bed itself is pretty simple the tailgate i should say it’s doesn’t do the origami fold like something from gm it doesn’t have bottle openers at least not that i can see like a ford wood it just has little cup holders in it uh i should

I should mention the design on the bed though you’ve got your chrome 4×4 badge here tundra stamped in chrome toyota you’ve got a reversing light and your reverse camera there along with a silver satin rear bumper and of course your trailer hitch receiver but let’s go into the bed it is damped on the way down it’s manual on the way up unlike the raptor that we were

Just in this is the five and a half foot bed you get a rubber bed mat in here it’s a sheet molded composite fabric if you don’t go with this i say fabric material you’ve got rails you’ve got tie downs you’ve got lights you’ve got all sorts of typical truck stuff but the best feature that toyota brings that no one else can touch is the roll down rear window you get

It in 4runner you get it here i’d don’t think you get it in a sequoia so enjoy it here above that you have reverse light you have another camera so you can see what’s going on in your bed it’s well lit it’s very nice um what else oh i know what else very sad you don’t have an onboard generator like you would in the raptor you do have 120 volt service out back so

You can still plug things into your bed but it doesn’t have the the full pro power onboard thing that ford would have again that’s a really really cool feature but objectively i think this thing looks pretty dang good so why don’t we step inside all right and this here the interior then is where the huge improvements needed to be made the old hunter came out in

07 and you could really tell so this thing needed to play catch up a lot and it definitely has there’s a couple reminders that you’re still in the classic toyota the gauge cluster looks like it was lifted from the previous gen and then like very mildly reskinned so there’s there’s some cost saving there or maybe it’s just you know classic toyota but either way

It totally works it’s fine it’s not a big deal everything else though is totally new and improved you get a massive 14 inch screen which i’ve had a mixed experience with when it comes to working like in how it works it’s amazing it’s quick the colors are great the brightness is good even in midday sun it does do some weird screen jumping this is a pretty early

One so maybe that’s just you know kind of like almost pre-production you know early model kind of thing i’d expect they fix that through over-the-air updates also since the screen is so big you do have shortcuts built in to the left hand side of the screen so closest to you as the driver they work well they make sense but there is some weird navigational stuff

In terms of like how you navigate through the radio that’s not quite as intuitive as you would find in well really every other car but you know to be honest i never listen to the radio anyway and apple carplay is wireless and it works perfectly fine for me and if you don’t want to use wireless carplay because it works on wi-fi you do have a usb plug in there as

Well i did mention during the driving portion that this has multi-terrain monitor as part of the trd off-road package and it does there’s cameras everywhere and the resolution is a lot better than it has been in the past but i did and it’s only happened once during my week with it and when i turned the truck on and turn it or turn it off and then back on it went

Away but half of the screen went green but only when the cameras were on like the normal screen went fine but half of the screen was green when i went to the camera so that was a little bit odd again probably something fixed when over-the-air updates or maybe just a one-off weird thing in terms of tech overall though you do get a wireless charger and of course

You get toyota safety since 2.5 i think they’re working on safety sense three or that has been rolled out with the bz4x i’m not exactly sure uh this one’s okay uh not perfect i have a lot of construction around me and it didn’t deal with it it didn’t deal with like the changing lines and the temporary lines and the construction barrels quite as well as the ford

Mustang mach e that i’m also testing here this week so it worked well not great but then in terms of design the interior here is really nice it’s very symmetrical it’s good sizing proportions the design is is very i don’t know what you would say rugged it’s geometric it makes a lot of sense you’ve got decent materials there’s rubberized materials on a lot of the

Buttons they’re huge the plastics are made to look like you know metal with some little accenting like on the volume knob here for like faux screws it has a very truckish feel to it and because of that the usability is very good a lot of the stuff that you have for buttons that are rubberized are things like your hvac controls or your heated seat heated steering

Wheel cooled seat those are all not baked into the screen which is fantastic it’s incredibly usable you don’t have to navigate through a bunch of screens to turn on your heated seat or your cooled seat speaking of seats i should mention that the cooled seat the fan is very loud but it does a very good job at cooling you down so i guess that’s fine and to be honest

You turn the radio on you don’t really hear it too much anyway i do want to talk about these seats though because i’m a big fan they are the perforated black leather they don’t have the arctic camo that you would find in like the trd pros but they have this like almost like old school gothic design to it it is very very cool very fancy feeling especially in this

Limited trim i like it a lot but bouncing back to usability there’s a huge center console here with a load of storage you get a bunch of chargers you get a sliding tray etc the cup holders are like a graduating depth so there’s a deeper one that’s closer to the passenger a shallower one they kind of fit the downshift water bottle of truth but you really have to

Jam it in there so it’s like a half pass i guess and then in terms of like your normal everyday stuff the jbl audio system is very good there’s like a subwoofer underneath the driver’s seat i think and there’s a lot of bass there’s a lot lot of depth to this system and that’s something that we’ve criticized in the past in previous toyota models so it’s it’s a nice

It’s a nice sound system that you get in here you don’t have it on this tester but you can get a big big big pano roof and that’s something that i would i would personally like to option if i could but you just don’t have here the rear seats though they’re spacious they’re not quite as big as so you would get on something like a supercrew f-150 or a comparable

Ram 1500 but they’re totally usable really spacious and relaxing you do get storage underneath in the trd pro and capstone or hybrid versions of this truck that’s where the battery will go so you won’t get storage underneath there on those trims overall a crucial and really well executed update to the cabin that genuinely feels like it could go toe-to-toe with

A comparable ram or or ford so i think that’s probably a good time to get into the final thoughts so that’s what it’s been like living with the new tundra it’s 90 there this is their first year and there are a couple weird things with the technology to be sorted out but like i said those are quick and simple fixes through over-the-air updates the things that

Can’t be changed with software are very good though the design is very good the driving behavior is very nice bordering on some luxury ladder frame suvs and the interior is modern and feature rich and since this is a toyota video i’d be massacred if i didn’t mention reliability yes the 3.5 twin turbo v6 is more complex than the 5.7 v8 i-force and there are a couple

Wastegate issues in small number of very early run tundras however there are always issues with the first few cars so if anyone will be able to sort it out it’s toyota thanks for watching we’ll see in the next one foreign

Transcribed from video
Toyota Tundra – Making Up For Lost Time By Downshift Reviews