Andy Stonehouse/Courtesy Photo
If you happened to see a very bright red 2022 Toyota Tundra in Breckenridge or Vail last weekend, chances are it was my test vehicle — because I haven’t either. seen yet another ’22 Tundra in real life.
The completely redone and redesigned Tundra is indeed a leap forward for the company, with impressive towing capacity, a completely redesigned look and significantly improved gas mileage and ride quality. Those last two points are pretty important because the previous Texas-built Tundra was known for 15 mpg (on a good day) and a bouncy ride.
I had a somewhat atypical model from the new family: a TRD Off-Road CrewMax crew cab with a shorter 5.5-foot-long bed, in Limited trim, for $60,273. It also had literally 700 miles on it, so my first mileage impressions—which included several days at 19mpg—would likely be closer to the 22mpg highway figure suggested by the EPA.
As you may have heard, Tundra comes out of the gate with either a new 3.5-liter twin-turbocharged i-Force engine, rated at 389 horsepower and 479 lb-ft of torque, or the i-Force hybrid engine. Force Max, which boosts that output to 437 horsepower and 583 lb-ft. It’s the powerhouse that will underpin a setup designed to tow up to 12,000 pounds.
I’ll be excited to try the hybrid later this year and see how its 1.87 kilowatt-hour motor/electric motor/battery smokes the tires. In the meantime, the standard i-Force motor is no slouch and comfortably delivers that copious power uphill when called upon to do so.
The ride was, yes, absolutely devoid of the trampoline bounce found in older models or on some off-road specialists from other brands. The only bouncing I really noticed was in the already mapped middle lanes of I-70 eastbound, and even that was controllable.
It’s certainly a big beast, and Vail’s overstacked parking garages required extra vigilance. The new multi-view camera setup, which also accentuates the utility of the trailer, offers a million different views on a massive 14-inch multimedia touchscreen in the cabin, along with plenty of loud parking sensors.
In terms of aesthetics, Tundra is about two years behind the game in incorporating the Cubist Public Malice theme we’ve seen on full-size domestic trucks or even the new Tacoma and 4Runner. But Tundra’s version of this theme is pretty cool, in its own big and spooky way.
On the custom TRD model, this grille is particularly large and expensive, with LED fog lamps integrated into its base, LED icicle-style headlights and huge LED running lights wrapped around the edges.
It’s even more dramatic from the rear, where large vertical brake lights with animated turn signals, a slight aero lip on the tailgate and all sorts of intricate angles come together. The same goes for the body, where the once simple Tundra torso is now a mix of character lines, including a big indent in the lower doors that you might only notice when the truck is coated in chloride. of magnesium.
The wheel arches are also beautifully huge with plastic edges, and the custom blacked-out 20-inch TRD wheels with all-terrain tires certainly filled that space.
Although the ’22 Tundra TRD doesn’t share the height of one of those scale-needed F-250 Tremors, it’s still a tough truck to get on. Mine had pre-installed $625 rock rails (plus skid plates and other TRD armor) but those aren’t running boards, so me and my passengers (especially when they were wearing ski boots) had great difficulty in pulling us on board. Big truck families, I guess, already expect it.
Speaking of families, the most gigantic rear doors I’ve seen open into a wonderfully spacious rear cabin, with 60/40 flip-up seats revealing plenty of storage space as well as that one-piece power sliding rear window.
The front cabin transformation is seriously impressive, with a very blocky multi-level approach that includes Texas-sized air vents, that TV-sized touchscreen, and two sets of rocker switches in plastic for temperature/airflow, and utilities including camera activation, trailer mode and rear differential lock.
It’s all perched on a gigantic console with a chunky shifter – it’s a 10-speed automatic, so you can do plenty of custom downshifts on long downhill drives – plus a huge open bin with a phone charger upright as well as dual-level cup holders. The console box is a complicated affair with padded edges and cargo trays in the middle, opening to reveal massive storage space.
As a TRD, the additional apparatus includes not only riding modes, but also multi-terrain selection, exploration mode and downhill assist controls.
Andy Stonehouse’s “Mountain Wheels” column is published Saturday in the Summit Daily News. Stonehouse has worked as an editor and writer in Colorado since 1998, focusing on automotive coverage since 2004. He lives in Golden. Contact him at [email protected].
