What the Toyota Tundra brings to the table
Here’s an oxymoron: the casual pickup truck buyer. Pickup truck buyers aren’t casual. Pickup truck buyers are a devoted, fanatic breed who can tell you with more certainty how much payload a Dodge Ram 1500 can take than the month their wife’s birthday falls in. Pickup truck buyers, they want a truck that can haul stuff, a payload capacity of at least half a ton; they want road monsters that make compact and smart cars duck for cover on the shoulder. Yes, this much is true.
And yet when Toyota debuted the Tundra about ten years ago, they came out with a pickup that, how to put this nicely, didn’t measure up to buyer expectations of what constitutes a pickup truck or, even, a Toyota. NJ truck buyers and buyers all across the country were content to stick with the old guard (Dodge, Ford, Chevy). Then slowly, over the last decade, there have been solid improvements made in the Tundra (the arrival of the Double Cab, enhanced powertrains, updated styling) and the latest makeover, as Toyota car dealers in NJ will tell you, is Toyota’s strongest offering yet.
The 2010 Tundra comes available in regular cab, Double Cab, and CrewMax (an extra large crew cab) body styles. The engine choices should suit almost any hauling or work capacity need. There is the top flight 381-hp 5.7 liter V-8. In the middle, Toyota has done away with last year’s 276-hp 4.7 liter V-8 and replaced it with a 310-hp 4.6 liter V-8. A more muscular engine good for towing stuff, but also it has better fuel efficiency, getting around 15 mpg city and 19 highway. And then also, standard on the regular cab and shorter-bed Double Cab, is a 236-hp 4.0 liter V-6. The Tundra V-8 engines still use a six-speed transmission and the V-6 a five-speed automatic. As for other features, the base and Limited trims both come with revised grills, and four wheel drive or rear wheel is optional on all Tundras.
For Toyota, NJ, Iowa, Texas, these and locales just like them all over the country are where they expect to see the Tundra rumbling prominently along the roads and highways, not playing second fiddle to Dodges and Chevys. The improvements taking place should help ensure truck buyers, you know, the one and only serious kind, start looking to their Toyota car dealers. NJ, America, get ready.
