Toyota is guided by a concept called kaizen—constant improvement. But constant improvement is also a relentless challenge. The Tundra Files tells the story of Toyota’s high stakes redesign of its full-size truck—the Toyota Tundra. This was a truck already lasting drivers more than a million miles. Where do you go from there? Through interviews with engineers, designers, and fellow Toyota enthusiasts, host Nick Heil looks at the unique problem of reinventing a truck that was already exceeding expectations. When you make the world’s most reliable vehicles, how do you make them better?
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Toyota is guided by a concept called kaizen—constant improvement. But constant improvement is also a relentless challenge. The Tundra Files tells the story of Toyota’s high stakes redesign of its full-size truck—the Toyota Tundra. This was a truck already lasting drivers more than a million miles. Where do you go from there? Through interviews with engineers, designers, and fellow Toyota enthusiasts, host Nick Heil looks at the unique problem of reinventing a truck that was already exceeding expectations. When you make the world’s most reliable vehicles, how do you make them better?
If Tundras are known for anything, it’s their longevity–and the new Toyota Tundra aims to preserve that reputation with its all-new powertrain: the i-FORCE 3.5 liter twin-turbo V6. Why a smaller engine than the previous generations’ V8? In short, to optimize power, performance, and efficiency. And to better understand how that evolved, we’ll show how Toyota leveraged learnings from Tundra’s legendary 4.7 liter V8—more specifically, the famous million-mile Tundra driven by Victor Sheppard. The story goes like this: in 2009, Sheppard purchased a new Tundra, and then drove the hell out of it. He averaged more than 300 miles a day, and nine years later, the odometer ran out of numbers. So Toyota gave him a new truck, broke down the old one, and studied it. In this episode, we’ll talk to both Sheppard and Toyota engineers to find out what Toyota learned from that vehicle, and how that longevity lives on in the current model.
The Tundra Files
Toyota is guided by a concept called kaizen—constant improvement. But constant improvement is also a relentless challenge. The Tundra Files tells the story of Toyota’s high stakes redesign of its full-size truck—the Toyota Tundra. This was a truck already lasting drivers more than a million miles. Where do you go from there? Through interviews with engineers, designers, and fellow Toyota enthusiasts, host Nick Heil looks at the unique problem of reinventing a truck that was already exceeding expectations. When you make the world’s most reliable vehicles, how do you make them better?
