A Japanese pickup truck sounds about as appealing and appropriate to me as an American made kimono. Here in urban, tiny, and densely populated Singapore, we use light, diesel lorries and vans like the Toyota Dyna and HiAce to haul industrial loads from one end of this 42km wide island to another, so you'll have to forgive me if I don't at all understand the point of a 5.8x2.0x1.9m (228.9x79.9x76.6in) truck riding some 270mm (10.63in) above the ground packing 379HP courtesy of a 5.7L V8 using the ever more expensive Putin–free petrol. Oh, and you can load a lorry from three of its four sides, and you won't have to worry if it rains mid drive in a van, none of which applies to a pickup truck.
Not exactly the best shot and not exactly a HiAce but if you're such a hot shot why don't YOU come over and take a better photo then?!
As Yard tells me, pickup trucks are an American cultural thing, and absent its real world capabilities like towing, hauling, and making you feel like you've a big dick driving through a shady town, the only thing I can tell you about the Tundra is how it drives on a racetrack. Irrelevant, you may think, but someone at TRD would be sure to disagree with you. After all, the 2019 Tundra TRD Pro we have under the microscope- er... I mean, magnifying glass this week does come with TRD coils and Bilstein dampers for what the game describes as improved stroke characteristics of the car, which makes me think either a doctor or a prostitute had been hired as a last minute replacement to write the in–game description. Where else have you heard those two words used together?
Your diagnostics just came back, baby, and you're definitely suffering from severe acute head deficiency.
In comparison to last week's '99 Impreza which I had described as handling like an offroad SUV, the Tundra drives much more like a normal car once you get used to being propped up on sky scraping stilts and having to steer farther away from walls on a track. To complement the bespoke suspension components that offer improved stroke characteristics, The TRD Pro has chunky, 285mm Pirelli all terrain tyres and even a better balanced body just to push the point further home, with a weight distribution not unlike that of a typical family sedan, at 56/44 F/R. With similarly sedan like 1.40Hz springs front and rear (1.55Hz rear in GT7), the Tundra really is a truck that you can treat like a car on a racetrack, and that's saying something when I got into trouble treating a car like a car just last week. It's a big shock to me, seeing as the aforementioned trucks and vans I've driven IRL feel rather precarious even at sane city speeds (the exact definition of which notwithstanding. Also, with how much I procrastinate, you'd think I'd have learned by now to stop using relative date terms. Ahh well, I'll change that habit later I guess).
On the default Comfort Medium tyres, the large truck of course struggles to attain the same cornering speeds as a car, with a much wider turning radius even before the tyres start to audibly complain. Drivers then will have to very quickly adjust for and get used to the lower cornering speeds and brake much, much earlier for a corner, despite the four wheel disc brakes mostly doing their part in upkeeping the illusion of driving a normal car. The 5,663cc 3UR-FE V8 engine came as a real surprise to me, with all its torque up top much like the V8 found in the RC F, with nothing in the low end for towing, or 2nd gear no gas, clutch in standing starts that I had come to expect is a necessity among utility vehicles. While it behaves largely the same as a normal family car on a racetrack, the way you need to rev the engine and wring it for every last rpm it can muster is almost like that of many of our favourite sports cars, like the 86 and 911... which is a problem, because this is a utility vehicle and not a sports car—one that is saddled with an automatic gearbox for some stupid reason my small Asian brain can't fathom, which means that the truck often bogs with this peaky engine and widely spaced ratios. For reference, you'll be just about touching 110km/h upshifting at redline in 2nd, and 3rd will noticeably bog even without the sensations of g forces if you drop as much as 10km/h below that. That's a variance of only about 6mph for my imperial friends. What am I driving, a big NA V8 or a Rotary Engine Pickup Truck?
Put on the Sports Hard tyres that GTS defaults every production car to, and that's when things get counterintuitively dicey. The extra grip does mask away most of the truck's problems with cornering speeds and even understeer, lulling drivers into a false sense of security into treating it just like a mildly exciting family car and driving it as such. The problems arise when you treat the Tundra to a downhill trail braking section, such as the ones you'll find on Bathurst or Nürburgring. There, the entire illusion of driving a mildly exciting family sedan completely falls apart, as may well your anatomy: the extra lateral g forces that the uprated Sport Hard tyres bring causes the ultra high profile tyre sidewalls to visibly and perceptibly flex, and what this translates to when driving is that the tyres will suddenly warp and give mid turn well after you've eased weight fully onto them, which in normal car driving theory is when they will have the most grip, leading to a precarious and totally unexpected situations that you have no way to prepare for or correct from, forcing drivers to constantly under drive the truck in anticipation, with at–the–limit driving a very risky gamble at best and a numb and ambiguous crapshoot at worst.
The Tundra also has a nasty habit of breaking out its rear end when you don't intend, and shyly tucking it away when you do. In corner entries where you have to lightly dab the brakes to shave off speed slightly and turn hard into a corner, the sudden movements will cause the unladen rear end of the truck will swing out. Something about the entire package of the Tundra makes it deathly allergic to certain turns, such as that fast, winding downhill section leading into the Foxhole of the Nordschleife, and the blind uphill left hander that it leads to, where many of us had mishaps on race day.
You might think that that would make for a car that's easily Scandi Flickable, but the very conservative 40:60 non–adjustable torque split means that any attempt to hold the slide with the gas just works to correct it instead. On the dirt, the Tundra can get just enough slip angle for an opportunistic photographer to feign some drama on corner entry, and it can even hold a slide if egged on by steering in the same direction as the turn, but by and large it's still a truck that very much wants to keep pointing straight, making it a rather idiot proof tool still, which may not necessarily be a bad thing. It's just... come on, who wouldn't want to see something this majestic going sideways in the mud?! Feels like a HUGE missed opportunity to me! I bought a TRD Pro, did I not? Why am I treated as though I bought a TRD noob instead?
So now that the cards have all been laid bare on the table, how does the Tundra compare to the only other truck in the game, the F-150 SVT Raptor? These two trucks drive largely the same, sharing many of the same defining faults of their class, such as ambiguity, tyre flex, automatic gearboxes, and inopportune tail happiness. Trust me, I spun the Raptor out braking for the second last corner of Fuji, when I never had an issue there even in air–cooled 911s. The main difference is that the Ford has 32HP more but is also 168kg (372lbs) heavier. The Ford is less optimally balanced with a weight distribution of 57/43 F/R, which leads to slightly more understeer when pushed in a deep corner, but its engine is less picky with gears in comparison. Overall, the Ford is a tiny bit quicker around even some of the tightest, most technical courses in this e–sports focused title, like Streets of Willow and Tsukuba, but the overall difference between the two is quite minimal as far as overall times and driving feel is concerned. Unless you're an ultra competitive alien chasing hundredths of a second around a track, you can just pick whichever truck you think looks or sounds best, or even whichever brand you're more loyal to, and you'll do just fine against the other.
Okay, so that comparison's a bit dull. Is there anything else that might offer a more contrasting comparison, then? Why yes of course! With how much I've compared the driving experience of these sporty trucks to a "normal car", how does it fare against... one of the best sports car money can buy today, the Tundra's stable mate, the GR86?
Stupendously closely, actually! The Tundra has the corner exit traction advantage and even the power to slightly extend said advantage out of a corner, though me in the 86 felt like I was going to smash face first into an aluminium wall in every braking zone. With the Tundras punching a wall so high above my car instead of in front of it, I swear following in the Tundra's slipstream results in more lift than drag reduction, to say nothing about the environmental issues and lack of visibility my less courteous colleagues cause with their unladen trucks! Yes, that is my perfectly reasonable, entirely logical, and wholly unassailable excuse for not winning a race in a sports car against a field of pickup trucks!
Going into this week's racing, I hadn't at all expected to find out the utilitarian side of the pickup trucks in a racing game. But, not only do these sport trucks offer a driving experience that closely resembles that of a normal, sensible car, I think the race against the GR86 has proved that trucks can produce lap times that are offensively close to one of the best sports cars money can buy today, which can certainly be argued to be "doing the work" of a sports car. Just don't expect it to be fun, engaging, or even cheap if you do decide that your truck should also do the work of a sports car. In the limiting confines and context of a racing game, these trucks are a fun novelty, like riding a Ferris Wheel. It might be mind blowing the first, second, or even the third time, but once that novelty wears off, you're just left with the empty realisation that you aren't doing much in one, and it's the same, safe thing over and over. Absent an absolute, real life need to haul ass and wade through shallow rivers, I'll just spend half the money the Tundra costs on an 86, which engages me and makes me smile every time I turn the wheel.
...damn, how a truck drives on a racetrack is entirely irrelevant. Who would've thought?
