Test Drive 2013 Tundra

[Jeff Strickland]

Well, not a test drive per se. My daughter has a friend that had to move on
short notice, among the items that had too leave was a car that doesn't run,
and it cannot go to the new house they are moving into. They own a brand
spanking new Tundra, 1050 miles on the odometer, and I drove it from San
Diego to Yuma dragging the car on a U-Haul trailer. The trailer is not
light, the car is a mid-90s Mustang Convertible.

The trip is 180-ish miles, one way. U-Haul trailers are not light. I left
San Diego at about 11:00AM and returned at about 7:00PM, so 8 hours to make
the round trip of 360 miles or so. That's an average of 45 mph, but the fuel
stops and unloading the car are part of that. My speed on the highway was
pretty steady at 80-ish.

The truck is has the Rock Monster, whatever, trim package with oversized
tires and the TRD 4WD package. Straight off the showroom floor, 4 doors and
enough bells to make a California Mission envious.

It pulled very strong. That's very, with capital letters. I'm not sure what
V8 Toyota uses, but 5.7L comes to mind. Very nice. The mountain pass that
one must traverse from the 'burbs of San Diego to the desert takes you from
sea level to about 4500 ft and back to sea level (actually almost 200 ft
below sea level outside of El Centro, but I am not a travel guide,I just
like cars) again, then a steady rise to the Colorado River and Yuma,
Arizona.

Absolutely no trouble keeping 80 showing on the speedo. None. Not any. I'm
sure the fuel mileage suffered at that pace, but I could not detect any
hesitation at keeping up the pace.

If you want a truck that can go 80 all day long, look at this one.

Seating was pretty nice for a truck. The seats, the driver seat because
that's the only one I sat in, seemed to support me well, I could set the
distance to the pedals so I was comfortable, and I could set the tilt of the
seatback for my aging body. I found that my elbows had no place to rest. Big
problem. My body was not tired from the long hours sitting in the seat, but
I found that I moved my hands a lot because my elbows were hanging in space.
I eventually moved the seat more forward that I like so that my elbows could
rest on the arm rests on the door and between the seats. The seats were not
electric. I _think_ there were seat heaters, but it was closing in on triple
digit temps in the desert, and seat heaters were not on my list of things to
play with.

Pulling the doors closed is a bit of a trick because the grab handle is in
the wrong place to perform this job. One must pull the door handle, which
moves, to pull the door closed. I found this to be an annoying trait. There
are window and mirror controls on the door that hide behind the steering
wheel when the door is closed, so operating the controls almost demands one
look away from the road -- the entire point of driving -- to change the
angle of the mirror, for example. Granted, with greater familiarity with the
truck this would become second nature, for an Old Guy to drive this truck
for the first time, it saddened me that Toyota puts stuff where you cannot
see it, but need it pretty regularly.

There is a giant dial to select 4WD operations -- Hi, Lo, whatever -- that
occupies prime real estate on the center console, and other controls that
are used far more often stuck away in places where they cannot be reached
easily. For example, the switch that is used to operate the electric rear
window is on a knee-bolster above the foot that operates the gas pedal. One
needs to move their head to the side and look down to see the switch that
might be used several times a week, or multiple times a day in some cases,
but a control that is likely to never be used is front and center. I'm just
sayin'...

I could not get the bluetooth to pair to my phone. The people that own the
truck had already paired two phones, and maybe that is a limit, I have no
idea. I pulled off the highway to get gas and spent 15 or 20 minutes trying
to guess how to pair my phone. The truck never reported that my phone was
nearby, and my phone had no clue the truck was surrounding it. I gave up.
Perhaps it is easy, but it is not intuitive.

The truck has a navigation system that worked really well. It took me
directly to the home I wanted to drop the car at. It completely missed the
Police Activity taking place about three blocks before my destination, but I
really can't complain about this shortcoming. One thing that I can complain
about though is that if the headlights are on in the daytime, the nav.
screen dims so much that it cannot be seen. One cannot drive with headlamps
on AND have any prayer of using the guidance system to get from A to B.

The stereo has an Aux. Input, among others, that is accessed via the same
button group that launches the guidance system. It is pretty handy, and when
using the Aux input and the nav. system, the nav takes over long enough to
tell you, LEFT TURN 200 FT, or whatever command it feels compelled to
anounce. Plugged in my cell phone and listened to my mix on Pandora the
entire trip. Nice. Nothing new, but still nice. I don't know if the
bluetooth will feed Pandora into the truck's speakers or not, since I could
not even get the bluetooth to handle phone calls. I have lots of room in my
head that says I'm the idiot here, but my way of thinking is that this sort
of stuff should be Idiot Proof and it was not. The Aux was easy, and it
worked very well.

Overall, I give the truck high marks for being a truck. It pulled well, went
straight even in a strong cross wind, and was pretty comfortable in the
grand scheme of things. Toyota dropped the ball though on placing the
controls that are used frequently in a place where they are visible without
actually moving your head to the side to see around the steering wheel, and
they put a control that is seldom used by most drivers in such a prominate
place on the dash board that it draws your attention. Assuming the dash
board is used in other Tundra trim packages, what could possibly belong
where the 4WD control goes if the truck only has 2WD?