the automotive world it can be pretty easy to fall behind especially when you're not keeping up with a lot of your competitors now that's especially true when you guys are looking in the full-size pickup truck segment and it doesn't get much older versus this dinosaur behind me this is the 2021 toyota tundra in the fully loaded 1794 edition as you guys know this tundra debuted back in 2007 2007 13 nearly 14 years ago now of course toyota has made some updates over the years and with of course new versions of the f-150 the ram the gm twins and all the electric trucks coming i want to take a look at this 2021 model and see where does it fit in this segment especially if you guys really really want to buy a toyota truck
The 2021 tundra toyota hasn't made any changes to the truck stylistic changes at least for the last four or five years for 2021 there are some new trims there's the nightshade and trail edition models however this one here the 1794 is equipped very similarly to the platinum trim however it just has more chrome bits and of course this one sits at the very top of the trim hierarchy now of course this generation tundra actually enjoys a pretty good amount of sales toyota sells around 120 000 of these every year in america and of course it has the usual truck styling elements here this big massive chrome grille of course you can get the grille painted out in black or a different finish i showed you guys a trd pro last year which is the more off-road capable model
The 1794 includes these full led headlights which include an led daytime running light you have led low and high beams just an incandescent turn signal and then led fog lights down here you can see all the chrome on this particular one painted in windchill pearl is not my preferred cup of tea i much prefer blacked out accents so keep that in mind toyota also offers a trd sport package the led headlights are optional you have to go for at least an sr5 term with the trd sport package to get that all the limited and trd pros and then this platinum in 1794 they come standard with that now the tundra is a big truck if you guys remember when the first generation came out it was considerably smaller than all of its other offerings but um at 228 inches long this one here is the crewmax which means it's the biggest four-door version with the five and a half foot short bed which is the most preferred configuration for most of the automakers you can see there's a big 1794 badge over here this particular one that i'm showing you has a 20 inch wheel minus the chrome finish i kind of like the polished finish this truck in general has around 10 and a half inches of ground clearance so the tundra does have pretty good off-road capability you can see the mirrors are also chromed uh they're chrome capped you can see there's a sunroof at the top of this particular one here and at 145.7 inch long wheelbase this is about the same length as most of its competitors even though the tundra is getting pretty old uh out there the rear of the truck is where you're going to see the most dated elements because toyota didn't even put any led lights back here you can see it's an all incandescent design incandescent brake lights tail lights reverse lights turn signals down here you can see my tester has the trailer hitch package with a 8 800 pound towing capacity and then over here with the bed you can see the short bed comes standard with the crew max trim it's a pretty usable bed this is what most of the competitors have i like the spray-in bed liner you can also get in or get a couple of more accessories in here but if you're looking for something like the you know power outlets that you have available in the f-150 hybrid that i just drove it's obviously not available in this truck um they also don't offer any kind of step ticket up here at least my tester does not have that but overall the bed is still useful i definitely recommend going for the spray-in bed lighter so all the outside of the 2021 tundra still looks old what about the interior toyota sadly has not made any changes this year although they did add one improvement for 2020 which i showed you already and that's the addition of android auto and apple carplay that's standard across every trim of the tundra but as you can see looking at the interior of my tester it really is a time capsule back to the 2010 era easily these seats on the 1794 edition i like the brown color i like the suede alcantara they are wide supportive and comfortable they're also heated
Cooled it includes an eight-way power driver's seat which is nice with two-person memory but overall the interior of this vehicle definitely looks pretty old now shutting the door you can hear the door has a relatively solid sounding thunk and the steering wheel you can see here is the same one that's on the foreigner the even the wood trim in here looks very fake it just looks super dated door panel materials here you can see hard just plastic there but it's soft touch right here more of that fake wood this massive chrome door handle and then it's slightly padded here but although i think toyota should have stitched this in leather now here's the key fob for the truck toyota added smart key access with push button start a couple years ago although the key fob itself feels pretty cheap and flimsy uh for a truck buyer i imagine this key i would not be happy with the way this key feels it doesn't feel very substantial you can see there's the button to fire up the engine i do like how toyota includes a power tilt and telescoping wheel however the wheel itself isn't heated which at this price point at this fully loaded trim toyota should be offering a heated wheel i don't know why they don't the gauge display also looks equally old it's got this very teeny tiny three and a half millimeter display there uh with the traditional analog gauges if you guys like this traditional look you're gonna like this however a lot of the newer trucks like the new f-150 that i just drove has a fully digitalized 12-inch display which is just miles ahead in terms of tech materials on the upper portion here are also hard touch plastic there's a new eight-inch touchscreen here of course that like i said includes android auto and apple carplay which is nice that's you can see that's ios 14 which is of course looking good but the screen itself is looking kind of small to be honest a lot of competitors
Going to a 12 inch display like the new ram like the new f-150 when you put the truck into reverse you can see backup camera but it's very rudimentary just a standard backup camera with trajec with distance markers but no trajectory um a lot of competitors offer a full top-down view which is pretty necessary in a big truck like this you can see toyota did update this interior a couple years ago where it resembles the previous generation f-150 with these dash vents the the sequoia the platform made of this truck should have gotten this interior but it didn't you can see dual zone climate control you have heated and cooled seats which is nice but no heated wheel like i said before you have three usb ports down here parking sensor switch down here you can see there's cup holders no wireless phone charger this massive shifter controls the six-speed automatic there's a lot more storage over here which is good good storage over here this is a pretty deep storage bin which is very very useful there's also little storage cubbies over there and then over here you can see the glove box is a pretty decent size it's not lined with felt or damp or anything like that some competitors offer a two-tier glove box and then above me toyota just gives you a standard moon roof which is part of an option package that my tester has again a lot of the competitors offer a big panel roof now thankfully even though the tundra is old it does offer a crap ton of interior space visibility is good in here and you also have toyota's safety sense but it's the older system where the lane keep assist doesn't actually keep you in the lane it just beeps the adaptive cruise control doesn't come down to a full stop which a lot of the competitors are definitely going to the newer tech features now if you guys plan to regularly carry adults or just want the most space ever you're going to want to go for the crewmax model which does offer comparable amounts of space to a lot of the newer competitors toyota says you get around 42 inches of legroom back here and you can see the seats also give you this little trick where you can fold them up and they'll stay up which is a lot easier to do when you don't have a camera in your hand but you can see once that is up you can see there's a nice you know storage area here where you could put taller items back here or you can put the seat down and get back here and as you can see toyota offers a ton of space in here so the crewmax model is pretty much as roomy as the last you know ram or f-150 although by the numbers it has a little bit less legroom by like two inches when i shut the door you can see the wide body of this truck allows for three people to sit across easily you have rear seat air vents back here but no heated rear seats some competitors are offering heated and cooled back seats now in the second row hard touch plastic back here and it's slightly padded over here same kind of chrome door handle as well the armrest here folds down to give you two cupholders which is nice and then these seats they don't recline or anything or anything like that they just kind of flip up whereas again the new ram offers a recline rear seat and then ford offers that max recline function for the front seats so again something to keep in mind the jbl sound system in this truck is also okay it's definitely nothing special nothing like what you get here in the new ford and ram trucks of course with their harman kardon and bang olufsen systems underneath the tundra's hood a lot of you should be pretty familiar with this powertrain it's been in production for the last 15 years or so this is the company's tried and true 5.7 liter iforce v8 and even though this engine is getting pretty old and it's also thirsty on gas a lot of you will probably argue that it's going to last you know half a million miles easily with very little problems that's something you couldn't say about the tundra's competitors the engine remains the same at horsepower 401 pound-feet of torque it doesn't even have direct injection it just has port injection but the engine when this engine came out back then it represented one of the best v8s you could buy today it's fine but it is a very thirsty engine because this is rated at 13 in the city 17 on the highway it goes out through a six-speed automatic transmission so again down almost four gears compared to some of the newer truck competitors so that's really going to hurt the fuel economy and the tundra is pretty heavy at 5 700 pounds this is a few hundred pounds heavier than you know an aluminum bodied ford f-150 which is one of the lighter options rear or four-wheel drive is still is available like my tester has with its four-wheel drive system with a low range transfer case and uh this particular one here will tow a maximum of 8 800 pounds which is again a little bit less than most of its competitors now i've had a chance to drive this generation tundra many many times so in this driving scene i'm mostly just going to talk about what toyota needs to address for the next generation the tundra still remains to be a comfortable driving truck the ride isn't quite as comfortable as some of the newer competitors of course especially specifically the ram with its air suspension but it's got very light kind of numb steering actually one of the lightest steering that i've ever experienced in the segment and the v8 engine [Music] still offers a good amount of grunt i mean it doesn't sound all that refined anymore it's still a pretty it's got actually gotten pretty noisy over the years you can also feel the vibration of the engine through the pedals and through the steering wheel um which is pretty normal for a vehicle that was 10 years ago 15 years ago but nowadays there's just a lot more refinement here the six-speed auto is down a few gears but it's actually a pretty responsive transmission and the truck is relatively easy to drive it's not a terribly difficult truck to drive but you feel the weight of the truck you feel that the steering is just numb you try out the driver assistance tech in this car like for example the lane departure alert all it does is it constantly beeps bloody murder at you every time you go near the lane markers like that so i just found myself turning it off because it doesn't actually offer any steering assist which is annoying but really what toyota needs to address for the next generation tundra is they need to address the steering feel they need to address the fuel economy because in my weeks for the testing i only got you know 13 mpg in mixed around town driving and 16 was the best that i could muster out on the highway which is just awful considering you know the big gas tank and just you know a lot of the competitors doing over 20 mpg again 0-60 is not bad for this truck i'm going to estimate it's around seven seconds it is slower than again a lot of the newer like ecoboost f-150s or if you go for a a chevy or gmc with its 6.2 liter v8 you're going to get smoked at the light every time you're in this truck but it still has a nice sound and the beauty about
The tundra is v8 power comes standard some competitors again go with a six a six cylinder even a four cylinder as their base engines but in terms of you know capabilities and whatnot i feel like this truck still feels like a tank it feels like it can go over you know go off-roading in it pretty easily but really the whole aspect that just ruins the experience for me is just the somewhat bumpier ride quality the old technology in this truck even though i have android auto and apple carplay now and just the poor fuel economy it's just really unacceptable for something that you know in 2020 2021 that gets this poor gas mileage at 13 in the city 17 highway even truck buyers don't want to be spending this much money on fuel so at the end of the day obviously the toyota tundra is one of the oldest trucks you can buy and that may be a good thing or it may be a bad thing i can't stress enough just how old this truck is but again i actually did enjoy my week's worth of time with this truck it still offers all the capability that truck buyers are looking for it still tows a decent amount it has plenty of room inside it has a powerful v8 that sounds okay although it's getting a little bit thrashy in its old age
Really my biggest complaint with the tundra has to do with the interior it just hasn't aged well it has you know some of the tech features that you expect nowadays especially with android auto and carplay but with no heated steering wheel no heads up display the drive resistance is getting pretty old it doesn't work as well as the toyota newer systems because you just can't retrofit it onto this old truck but that fuel economy where i averaged only 13 mpg around town and at the best i could muster up 16 mpg on the highway that's just awful combine that with the 38 gallon gas tank and this is one expensive truck to fill up and even truck buyers they understand that gas gas is going to be more for a truck but they don't want to be spending that much money and getting that poorer fuel economy because obviously the newer trucks are going to get well over 20 mpg when you guys take those out on those longer road trips now speaking of which what makes the tundra still enticing obviously besides
The toyota reliability and build quality is the pricing of this truck it starts at thirty three thousand seven hundred dollars for the base version um that's for an sr5 two-wheel drive of course the standard bed or standard cab my tester here is the s1794 edition starts at 51 945 it's the same price as the platinum grade and from there there's really only the moon roof option and a couple of toyota accessories so all in my tester is 55 grand with destination that does make the tundra a lot easier to spec and build versus a lot of its competitors and it makes it significantly cheaper so that's something that a lot of you will definitely consider combine them with the toyota reputation for reliability so it's no wonder that toyota still manages to sell over 120 000 of these every year but my argument is if you guys are looking for the newest truck with the best technology the best fuel economy the most capability the most luxury the most tech the tundra's competitors are very enticing and really until toyota finally unveils the new generation tundra which we should be seeing sometime at the end of next year with a hybridized powertrain my recommendation wait or look at its newer competitors or if you must have something that is tried and true and familiar this is definitely still worth a look but i hope you guys have enjoyed my full overview on the 2021 toyota tundra 1794 if you're also looking to see the latest cars i'm testing be sure
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