In this episode, our hosts examine how the 2025 Toyota Tundra Rally is meeting customer demands for innovation and style. They explore the new engine options, luxurious trims, and market success in regions like Colorado. Despite previous engine issues, the Tundra continues to appeal to truck enthusiasts, demonstrating Toyota’s commitment to evolving their vehicles. Stay tuned as they discuss why testing this vehicle firsthand could redefine your expectations of a truck.
All right, that time each week where we slip in some car reviews. I think we only have one this week, Richard, and you were able to drive recently a 2025 Toyota Tundra Rally, which I’m not familiar with the rally version, so you’ll have to fill me in as well. Go ahead.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, so it’s a new part for 2025, Dad, right? They kind of introduced it. I’m looking at the press release right now. And so it gives you the red, orange, and yellow colorway, right? Kind of the old Toyota TRD kind of type stuff. It gives you 18-inch wheels on all-terrain tires. Bilstein absorbing shocks. It adds heated front seats, a heated steering wheel, gives a larger display. You also have to get the, it comes on the larger Crewmax model. You get electronically controlled locking differential, multi-terrain select crawl control. Let me see here, soft tech trim seats. It’s available in four colors, ice cap, magnetic gray, mignite, black, metallic, and celestial silver. And so for the easy way, Dad, is it’s an option that you can put on, I think it’s on the SR5, maybe any of them. I’m not entirely sure. But I know you can for sure put it kind of on the lower levels of the Tundra, Dad. And it does a great job. It kind of adds a little bit of some different badging. It adds some different, you know, luxurious features on the inside. And it’s really something that it can add, just maybe set apart your collection your trim addition or your level of Tundra. But outside of that, Dad, it’s pretty much everything we’ve come to expect, right? They redesigned this vehicle back in, let’s see here, I think it was 2022, if I’m not mistaken, Dad, right, is when they really came out with this new addition. There’s two different turbocharged V6s. One a hybrid and one that’s kind of standard, or not standard, but one that’s just a turbocharged version. We drove just that one. We didn’t drive the I-Force Max, although both of them work really, really well at our altitude, Dad, by them adding the V6 with the turbocharged engines. It still works great, and especially at our altitude, it’s fantastic. It’s got a nice big cab, Dad, as you know, especially the CrewMax version. It’s got a really spacious back seat. It’s got the self-closing, self-operating tailgate, which is a great feature that’s up and down. Again, you’ve got some nice apportionments on the inside. As far as the display, Dad, I think it’s the really nice big 14-inch display. the model we had, which when you get in it, you’re like, whoa, this thing is pretty big and spacious, and it works. It’s very easy to use that. It’s a nice user-friendly system that they’ve done a good job at. And that, honestly, on the Tundra, you can get, depending on how you want to equip the Tundra, you can get it for everywhere from kind of the low 40s to the high 80s, right?
SPEAKER 01 :
Wow, big spread.
SPEAKER 02 :
That’s just depending on how you want to… How you want to equip it, right? And that’s more of a, you know, if you want the SR package, right, which is kind of the most basic, or the Capstone, which is right up there with a lot of the luxurious trim levels. But speaking of the Rally version that we drove, it was nice to have some of those kind of other features that maybe you wouldn’t get on a more basic model of the Tundra. And you get it for a relatively decent price. I think that package adds about almost, I think, $8,500, $9,000 more somewhere around there to the price tag as of right now. And it was something that I would definitely consider buying, again, because you can get it kind of on a more base level, but you can add some of those luxurious features without having to option those out differently. So you and I, well, you’ve driven these new Tundras, Dad, and they’ve really improved them, especially by changing out those engine options.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, the interior is much better. You get more options than you’ve ever had in the past. The fuel economy with the new options has gone up. They have had, and there’s no secrets here, they’ve had some engine issues with some of these things, although I will tell you that, yes, as time goes by, like a lot of other manufacturers that are encountering some of these same issues, they will get those things dialed in. So I’m not too concerned about that. Every manufacturer at times has a few struggles with that. I get comments and questions on that on a routine basis. I will say that there are still a lot of loyal, dedicated Tundra drivers out there. In our area here in Colorado, we see a ton of them. It’s just one of those models, Richard, just sells very well in this Rocky Mountain region. And I think that alone should show you something. They wouldn’t sell as well as they did if it wasn’t a vehicle worth buying. And again, yes, they’ve had their share of problems, so have other vehicles out on the road as well.
SPEAKER 02 :
They absolutely have, Dad. And like you said, they wouldn’t sell as many of them if they weren’t great. And we’ve been asking for a – not just us, but a lot of customers have been asking for an improvement or a refreshment and improvement. I think that they did that. And, again, we kind of get different models of these different versions, Dad. And they all kind of have their own things, and we could sit here and kind of spend multiple segments on all the differences. And all that we can say is go out and test drive these things yourself, Dad, because you can kind of see some of those subtle differences here. Maybe you can save money. Maybe you want to spend a little bit more money, right, to differentiate yourself from the next Tundra driving down the road because, again, there’s a lot of them out here for good reason.
SPEAKER 01 :
That’s right.
SPEAKER 02 :
So with that, I would encourage folks, get out, test drive this dad, see what you like. You can probably get one ordered with all of the different things that you would want on it. And when you do that, let them know that John and Richard Rush from Drive Radio and Rush to Reason sent you.
SPEAKER 01 :
This is John Rush from Rush to Reason and Drive Radio. Thank you so much for listening. Check out more of our podcasts at RushToReason.com or Drive-Radio.com.
