Toyota Tundra to set ‘new benchmark’

Toyota Australia may be late to the pick-up truck party with its Texan-built, Melbourne-modified Toyota Tundra, but it’s just fired a major warning shot over the heads of its larger-than-life US rivals.

On sale in 2025 – if it lives up to Toyota’s fastidious quality, durability and reliability standards during testing in the meantime – the fourth factory-backed full-size pick-up truck to be converted from left- to right-hand drive (RHD) locally after the RAM 1500, Chevrolet Silverado and Ford F-150 is being dubbed as a ‘premium towing machine’ and claimed to set new standards in its class.

“We’re confident this program sets a new benchmark for the re-engineering of a full-size pick-up truck from left-hand drive to right-hand drive,” declared Toyota Australia’s senior manager of vehicle evaluation and regulations and the project’s engineering lead, Ray Munday, firing a blatant broadside at rivals including Australia’s current pick-up king, the RAM 1500.

Just one model grade – the road-biased Toyota Tundra Limited – will be offered in Australia, along with by one engine: the top-spec i-Force MAX hybrid powertrain, which matches its mainstream rivals for 4.5-tonne towing capacity and trumps them for power and torque.

Combining a 3.5-litre twin-turbo petrol V6 with an electric motor and small battery pack, the hybrid powertrain belts out 326kW and 790Nm and is matched as standard to a 10-speed automatic transmission and part-time 4x4 system.

An electronic trailer brake controller is standard too, but the Tundra has the lowest payload of the four factory-backed big utes, at 758kg. This falls short of the Silverado’s 760kg, the RAM’s 833kg and F-150’s 953kg.

While the RHD Toyota Tundra has not been officially green-lit for sale in Australia, carsales understands that will be a mere a formality following a 12-month test phase involving 300 Tundra utes leased to customers to iron out the kinks, before customer sales officially commence in early 2025 via Toyota dealerships nationally.

Pricing won’t be confirmed until closer to its launch date, but expect the Tundra to be considerably more expensive than its rivals, potentially starting above $140,000.

Toyota has confirmed that the 280 customers and 20 Toyota Australia staff who will be guinea pigs for the project will pay a full service lease costing $2500 per month, which covers registration, insurance, service and all mechanical repairs.

Although Toyota has handed its arch-rivals – chief among them the Ford F-150, the world’s top-selling pick-up for the last 46 years – a considerable head start in the market, it has full confidence the Tundra will exceed expectations.

The RHD Tundra project’s lead engineer made several provocative comments during the first media drive of Australian production-spec Tundra utes at the Anglesea proving ground in Victoria last week, and bristled when the word ‘conversion’ was mentioned.

“Everyone wants to call this project a conversion but that’s really inadequate,” said Munday.

“It completely understates the breadth and complexity of the re-engineering that’s taken place, both by Toyota and our local partner, the Walkinshaw Automotive Group,” he said.

Revealing new details on the project, Munday confirmed RHD Tundras will use an array of original equipment components from other RHD Toyota and Lexus models already on sale in Australia, and also original parts from Toyota USA in North America.

“The steering, brakes… they’re straight off the TNGA-F platform, so we haven’t had to re-engineer [those parts]. For example, looking at the steering rack, it’s an EPS steering rack taken straight off the Lexus LX,” he said.

Munday added that the exhaust shields (an ADR requirement for parking in long grass) were also from Lexus LX, while the brake pedal and temperature controls were taken from the Toyota LandCruiser 300 Series and several other parts are from the same sources that supply the US-built Tundra.

“The headlamps and tail lamps, the conversion parts are actually made by the same company in the same plant in North America that makes the left-hand drive parts. So these critical components are sourced by the same supplier,” he said.

Australian Design Rule (ADR) changes required for seat belts and other critical components are also from the Toyota’s USA suppliers, while local changes to the tow bar and hitch were also required to meet ADR regulations.

“So everyone wants to call a project like this a conversion but you can see that the number of parts changed – the depth that’s gone into that – it’s an inadequate word.

“Yet it is in fact a world-first for Toyota to take a vehicle built in a country that’s not Japan, export it to another country, re-engineer it with a local partner, undertake final assembly in a non-Toyota factory and still sell it as a Toyota.”

Toyota quality standards made it ‘a very difficult program’

The RHD Tundra’s engineering chief confirmed that development work began back in 2018 – well before the third-generation pick-up was publicly revealed in late 2021.

“This Tundra RHD program started more than five years ago. The concept was pretty straightforward. We knew that there was demand in Australia for a premium towing machine.

“We’ve seen the figures, we’ve seen what was going on on the road, but what we had to do is convince our parent company and the Texas manufacturing team that there was a solid business case here.”

A small Aussie team led by Munday set out to “achieve what many thought was impossible by adopting a no compromise approach”, he explained.

“We got a lot of ‘nos’,” he laughed.

“There were a lot of people that thought this was impossible. This was a very difficult program [because] we committed to our parent company that the quality standards of this vehicle will be OE, so in other words identical to the strict requirements of vehicles produced in a Toyota manufacturing facility.

“So to confirm that level of quality our development process has matched a typical Toyota development, both for the key run-stop-turn components as well as the final build process itself,” he said.

The testing and development phase flowed through COVID, which saw some of the world’s most severe lockdowns affecting Toyota Australia’s HQ in Altona, near Melbourne. This added to the complexity of the project, especially when engineering groups from the Tundra’s home base in the USA and also from Japan were required to drive the vehicles in Australia.

Crash testing and even durability testing on shaker rigs was undertaken “…to ensure that there’d been no compromise” to reliability and safety, said Munday.

“Then after announcing the program in September last year, we’ve been able to do long-distance real-world testing across the country, everywhere from our site down in Altona, all the way up to Darwin and pretty much continuously towing a four and a half ton trailer.”

He stated that the goal was to ensure the production quality process matched ‘typical Toyota levels’.

“Not only did our engineers visit the Texas plant where the vehicles are made on several occasions, but the sign-up process required visits from the American chief engineer to come here and also senior executives from Toyota Motor Corporation’s quality division [in Japan].

“And when they came, they were driving this vehicle and even the [US] chief engineer commented ‘This doesn't feel any different to his left-hand drive vehicle in North America’.

“So our internal judgment is that we’ve achieved those key primary targets: A premium towing machine for our customers, no compromise in performance or dynamics from the left-hand drive version, and full Toyota quality, durability, reliability,” said Munday.

We’ve driven the world’s first factory-backed RHD Toyota Tundra on road and off, and towed both 3.5- and 4.5-tonne braked trailers with it. Watch this space for our first Australian review and video when the embargo lifts at 7:00pm on Thursday, January 18.