First Toyota Tundra customer deliveries begin

The first 50 locally-converted Toyota Tundra pick-ups will be handed over to Australian customers later this month – ahead of schedule – as the Japanese brand pushes ahead with its first-ever local right-hand drive conversion program.

Several RHD examples of the full-size US-built pick-up have been spied undergoing development testing by the Walkinshaw Group around the country as long ago as October 2022, but photos of an Australian production-spec Toyota Tundra Limited were snapped just outside Toyota’s national headquarters in Port Melbourne today and the army-green dual-cab Tundra Limited almost certainly a customer vehicle.

“We go out to trial in November, so later this month our first 50 vehicles will be in customer hands and then over the next six months a further 250 customer vehicles [will be delivered] under the trial condition that we are deploying in Australia as a world-first,” Toyota Australia’s vice-president of sales, marketing and franchise operations Sean Hanley told carsales.

Following in the footsteps of the RAM 1500, Chevrolet Silverado and Ford F-150, Toyota plans to release its locally-converted, factory-backed Tundra nationally by 2025, pending final sign-off by Toyota Motor Corporation.

All Aussie versions of the giant ute will be powered by a 3.5-litre V6 twin-turbo petrol-electric powertrain (325kW/790Nm) that generates enough twisting force to tow up to 4500kg.

The Tundra’s hybrid V6 drives through a 10-speed automatic transmission and part-time 4WD system with off-road ready high and low gear sets.

Every Aussie-delivered Tundra will be equipped with heated, ventilated and power-adjustable front seats, synthetic leather upholstery, a JBL audio system, 12.3-inch digital instrument cluster and 14-inch central touch-screen.

“We're very excited about the vehicle,” said Hanley, who cautioned that the customer trial period will be crucial in ironing out the kinks and ensuring the vehicle lives up to Toyota’s global quality standards ahead of its expected local launch in 2025.

Before then, the Tundra Insider Program will lease around 300 of the vehicles to selected customers, who in turn will provide feedback on their experiences.

However, Toyota Australia won’t go as far as proclaiming its first Tundra will be the highest-quality full-size pick-up truck conversion in Australia, where the Walkinshaw Group also remanufactures RAM and Silverado trucks with Stellantis and General Motors backing respectively.

“I'll let the market decide [if it’s Australia's best-quality RHD conversion].

“What I can say to anybody that gets a Tundra, you’re going to be getting a top-quality vehicle.

“We put this through a comprehensive quality process that’s still going as we speak today and the market can be completely confident that they’re getting a Toyota-quality vehicle.”

Toyota Motor Corporation – the world’s biggest car-maker – has never ‘remanufactured’ vehicles before so there’s a lot riding on the new program, which takes left-hand drive Tundras imported from the USA and converts them to right-hand drive for use in Australia.

Hanley said he wasn’t overly concerned that rival vehicles are remanufactured by the same company that is developing and converting the Tundra.

“There’s probably lots of rivals by then [2025] but we just do our thing and I think people will see the quality of the Toyota Tundra and fact it’s a hybrid as well is pretty helpful. Its capabilities are unbelievably good and it looks great and the conversion will be first-class,” he proclaimed.

It will be the first time that final validation for a Toyota vehicle won’t take place in-house at Toyota and that members of the public will have input.

However, the 300 customers involved in the Tundra Insider Program have been asked to limit negative feedback exposing any flaws to the Toyota engineering team, rather than to social media.

Customers are also required to keep the vehicles away from the automotive media, such as carsales journalists.

It’s not clear what will happen to the vehicles involved in the trial once it is completed, Toyota Australia’s chief salesman stressed the vehicles were not early development mules.

“It’s got incredibly good quality – we’re not putting out prototypes as part of the trial. These are full production-standard vehicles and the reason we’re putting them out there is to get real-world testing,” said Hanley.

However, the senior Toyota Australia executive said the Tundra’s future Down Under was still in the balance.

“Look, we’re not sitting here believing that we’re going to have massive – if any – quality issues because we put a lot of work a lot of planning into this. Walkinshaw has done a first-class job. They’re deploying to our production system philosophies, in a practical sense and also a visual sense.

“Quality, durability, reliability is everything to us. And I’ve often said being first to market is not the most important thing to Toyota. It’s a longer-term vision. It's not a short-term goal.

“So when you look at Tundra, absolutely it could get stopped if the quality doesn’t meet our strict quality requirements. It won’t go to market, it’s as simple as that.

“But we're not doing this not to launch. We want to launch, obviously, but at this time we still don’t have the final sign-off to launch this car as a volume model [on the] open market. So this is a very controlled trial that we’re doing now and you’ll start to see Tundras on the road from later this month.

“So our job is to get that quality achieved, which we believe we will, and then and only then we launch the car,” he said.

Stay tuned for more details on the new Tundra as we get them.

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