EP28: A Toyota Confessional: Only When You Beat On Them Do You Understand

Jon narrates his unexpected journey of purchasing a 2016 Toyota Tundra Limited. Despite his longstanding preference for Rams with high performance engines, he opted for a Tundra for its practicality, reliability, and suitability for California’s lifestyle. Jon recounts his experiences with various trucks, emphasizing the appeal of the Tundra’s build quality and its suitability for both daily driving and towing. He also shares anecdotes from his visits to dealerships and the Toyota factory, highlighting cultural and historical aspects of Toyota’s manufacturing. His detailed and personal account underscores the pragmatic choice of a vehicle that blends durability with everyday convenience.

Notes

Jon Summers is the Motoring Historian. He was a company car thrashing technology sales rep that turned into a fairly inept sports bike rider. On his show he gets together with various co-hosts to talk about new and old cars, driving, motorbikes, motor racing, motoring travel.

Trevor Something – Into Your Heart
Toyota: respect, not love
Dually Rams and buying vehicles to the nth degree
No MoT, the Land of the Free
The Hot Rod, with no mudguards or windshield
A 2016 Toyota Tundra Limited
Towed my Mercedes home
Thanks, Toyota of Clovis
Dodge Ram SRT10
The 1000lb/ft Ram Dually…
…as the 3 car hauler
68RFE vs Aisin
Route 66 Road Trip Pod
Lemonsquad
Dodging two white Rams
Escalades as the pinnacle tow vehicle
Bought with 198k. One owner, Clean Carfax
Toyota more school run friendly than ex-ranch Dually Ram with bullbar
Truck needs to double as a luxury car
Tundra as Land Cruise with bed and bigger motor
Two sizes of crew cab – 3 Series or 7 Series size rear seats
Tundra 1794
Ford King Ranch
The value of the back up camera
The black Tundra with Arthur Daley in Sacramento
CarUk Lee
A word on 200k trucks
Toyotas – “only when you beat on them – REALLY beat on them – do you understand” M. Newton
Too hot for a road test
Rabbit Pitts’ “Paw Paw” Truck
The long life of Toyota trucks
Pulling to the right, “they all do that, Sir”
Towing the Mercedes home, in 116 degree heat
A super capable tow vehicle
Planning well to choose and look at truck, but not how to pay and get home
Earlier experience with Toyotas as hot air balloon ground crew
Other pod guests, Newton and Garcia love and always own Toyota trucks
Domestic pick up size, V8, allied with Toyotas reliability
Even if the reliability is a myth the perceived reliability drives value
Ford truck motors highly stressed vs Chevy, Toyota
Interior looks lke 40k, not 200k
A visit to the Toyota factory
Toyoda and Toyota
Soichiro Honda as personification of the brand, and in motorsport
Toyota isn’t racing, it’s rebuild the nation
W210 Mercedes copied by Lexus GS300
Toyota – cheap feeling materials like Ford but screwed together like and 80s Mercedes
Experiments with High 4

Transcript

[00:00:00] John Summers is the motoring historian. He was a company car thrashing technology sales rep that turned into a fairly inept sports bike rider. Hailing from California, he collects cars and bikes built with plenty of cheap and fast, and not much reliable. On his show, he gets together with various co hosts to talk about new and old cars, driving, motorbikes, motor racing, and motoring travel.

Good day, good morning, good afternoon. It is John Summers, the motoring historian. Rather than saving this particular topic up for, for an episode, I thought, you know what, I’ll just lay this, uh, lay this down real quickly because, uh, this already took place a couple of weeks ago and I’m in danger of sort of forgetting.

The, uh, [00:01:00] the wrinkles of, uh, of the process that led me up to this rather unusual situation of me buying a Toyota, um, yeah, there, I said it, it’s, it’s, I almost can’t get it out. I mean, a few years ago when, when Toyota lost Le Mans, um, on the very last lap after 24 hours of racing, and it would have been their first time winning and, you know, I, I was blown away.

Please for Porsche. You know, I, I’m not a Toyota fan. I, I respected them from the time that I visited the town in, uh, in Japan. And I’ll talk more about that in, in a moment, but my God, yeah, I bought a Toyota Tundra. Um, yeah, I, I feel it’s like a confessional, right? And this is why this piece has to be like, uh, uh, a standalone.

Um, for the longest time I was looking at Rams. Um, I’ve always had a thing about rams because you know, what I’ve, what I always [00:02:00] do and what I have to step away from when I’m making a sensible purchase like this is I always go to the nth degree, you know, I don’t buy a sports bike. It has to be the leader sports bike.

I don’t buy a leader sports bike. That’s in good condition. No, no, I’ll buy the cheapest, most wrecked one. I can possibly find, you know, that that’s the, the uh, The way that I, I seem to have done things, certainly since I came to the States because of the whole thing of no MOT, so you can get away with with ancillaries, you know, cars on cars, things like wipers and things like that not working.

I mean, for American audience in Britain, any switches that the car has on the dashboard. And they have to work. So if it has spotlights, it doesn’t matter if the if as a switch for spotlights, even if it has the spotlights taken out of it, that’s still an MOT fail. And that means you can’t register the car and use it that year.

So, um, [00:03:00] yeah, so we’re here in here in California. We have like. You know, smog, right? So it has to pass emissions if it’s older than a 1975. But, you know, we, there are, are, you know, all that means is you have to, you, you kind of hot rotted it, right? That that’s not a test of how good the lights are or the brakes are, or whether or not the windshield’s got a massive.

Cracking it as our Mercedes has got at the moment. So, you know, it really is. Pardon me. It really is the land of the free. And I realized that when I, when I first came here, it’s not a coincidence that, you know, California is where they invented the hot rod and the hot rod is a vehicle that doesn’t have mud guards.

Because, you know, it doesn’t rain. So why would you need it? You’re not driving through mud. It’s not splashing up on you. It doesn’t have windscreen wipers. It doesn’t have a windshield. If you think about the quintessential, you know, high boy hot rod. Um, Yeah, if you think about the hell’s angels, you know, [00:04:00] that’s a lifestyle that’s predicated on the weather being alright.

You couldn’t be a hell’s angel in Norway, could you? Bloody freezing. There’s going to be loads of hell’s angels from Norway writing to me now. But you understand the concept that, you know, that I’m saying that this lifestyle of, of, uh, living on the road as a biker or, or, um, hot rods without rooms. Um, this is, uh, uh, or weather protection.

This is a, uh, function of, of California and primarily Southern California’s, uh, uh, great weather. But the Toyota truck is also a function of California, right? This one I’ve bought. Um, I mean, it was built in Texas, right? It has a 350 cubic inch V8. You know, I, I, if, if you said that normally built in Texas, 350 inch cubic, uh, three 50 cubic inch va, you would think I was talking about a domestic pickup truck, [00:05:00] wouldn’t you?

And, and that’s really how I arrived here the morning I went to, um. The morning I set out to look at the one that I ended up buying, I planned to look at another truck earlier in the day. That was a Chevy. It was two years newer. It had done 60, 000 miles less, but I just thought, you know, for raw, Value. So look, let’s, um, position this truck, uh, positions truck property.

It’s, it’s a 2016 Tundra limited, um, limited, I guess, is the gussied up one. It has, uh, uh, leather interior has heated seats, which are the two features that my, my wife and son were keen for. Um, I’ve done like. It’s got 1200 1300 miles in it. Long journeys running around town. I’m towed with it already. Um, it has cruise control.

[00:06:00] Um, that works superbly on hills. Um, it’s towed the heaviest car that I’d likely to want to tell with it. I’m just about the heaviest car. Maybe maybe the Pontiac’s heavier than the Mercedes, but I told the Mercedes with their home from the dealership that I bought it and just. Was I think of that Toyota of Clovis was the dealership and shout out to them, you know, it was a pleasant experience, uh, uh, dealing with them.

Yeah, so it’s a limited, I guess, which isn’t like the TRD, like, whatever, but it’s got like the chrome grill and it’s got chrome wheels, which is a little gussied up for me, frankly, but, you know, it’s a Tundra. So. You know, it’s not that gussied up and, and fundamentally, you know, I found myself saying to somebody can’t remember who I feel like when you buy a Toyota pickup in California, it’s almost like buying a pair of flip flops or buying a hoodie.

You know, the, these, this, it’s sort of part of a, of a California, [00:07:00] California car guy sort of uniform or California dude kind of, uh, kind of, uh, uniform. So. Yeah, so I was looking at the Rams for the longest time. How those of you that know me well know that probably, you know, five, six, maybe even 10 years ago, I was looking at those, um, the 10 rounds, the ones that had the Viper engine.

If you don’t know about them, just Google them. I think they’re called the SRT 10. Um, I, I was close to, to buying one, but, but didn’t just because, um, I mean, they’re just a bit bloody stupid, aren’t they? Just a, a high revving race motor in a pickup truck. I mean, it’s just a bit like, it’s a bit of a silly thing.

So I, I, I drove one and, and it was, um, thuggish, um, The salesman kept on wanting me to do a [00:08:00] burnout in it. And that kind of put me off it. Um, because like, that’s kind of all it’s good for us. That’s the implication. And the gas mileage is terrible. And I was planning to use it as a daily driver. And I just, I just You know, I just didn’t want to be there with, I mean, it around town, it does like eight to 10 really bad gas mileage.

If you stop and think about it, you think, well, it’s that much worse than this Tundra that does like 15 to 16. Well, yeah, it is. It really is. It’s, it’s, you know, the Tundra is 50 percent better. Now, I agree that in comparison in this place of European cars that are regularly doing 40, 50, 60. Maybe even more than that miles to the gallon.

Then, you know, this this 15 to 16 for this tundra is is pretty bad. Um, so how do I arrive at it? Well, um, the, uh, [00:09:00] So I pivoted from the V10 Rams to then feeling like I, I had always wanted a dual wheel truck and, and uh, the Rams of recent years have not only had more power than the Fords and the Chevys, but they’ve also had the dual wheels encased in this sort of swoopy bodywork.

I bloody loved it. The 2018s, 2016, 17, 18s, they sort of did a leaning forward look on the grill. Um, looked really good. 2019. They did a grill, which I wasn’t sure about at first. Now I like it, but I wasn’t, I wasn’t sure about it at first. But, um, in 2019, they introduced, uh, a model that had a thousand foot pounds of torque.

Well, while I was looking at trucks, I realized that those trucks, a lot of them are used for car hauling and what they can do with a gooseneck trailer. They can, it’s like if you [00:10:00] imagine a flatbed. It’s just like an open car trailer, but a gooseneck, so it’s attached in the middle of the bed with one, two, three cars parked on the trailer, chained down.

These things tow across the country. There’s a whole, I believe there’s a whole raft of business that these massive torque and horsepower rams, particularly other, Duallys as well, Fords more than than Chevys, but particularly these Rams have opened up a whole kind of business where where you can, um, you know, go in your local Dodge dealer, buy a truck like it’s a personal car and then set up a business that can can tow.

So you can tell them how to turn on my voice, how for howie. Cool. I think these thousand foot pound, uh, trucks are, you need to do the, so I, at Christmas time, I was on the brink of buying one before I realized that not all trucks, not all duly diesel rams are created equal. [00:11:00] They are not. Some have the 68 RFE Chrysler transmission.

Others have the Asian Ashin asin, A-I-S-I-N. Um, I have a colleague or, you know, mentor at Stanford who did some consultancy work for them. And, and it was crazy how, you know, he was doing consultancy work for them and I was, and had I ever heard of them. And, and here was me researching why I needed a truck with that transmission rather than the, the, the, the.

Rather than the Chrysler. Well, I actually understand there’ve been recalls around each of them, but this didn’t put me off the truck. Uh, uh, and I realized that I could get into one for, you know, 25 for a super high mile one 30 for a 200. Ish, 200,000 ish, mile one and, and uh, uh, you know, mid thirties if you wanted to just do them, just ticked over a hundred thousand miles.

Clearly that mid thirties [00:12:00] truck is probably the best price point. In fact, spending 40 on one that’s done less than a hundred thousand miles, like a 2019 or a 2020 is actually probably your best value for, for those trucks. But I’m just like $40,000 for a pickup truck. I just couldn’t bloody do it. So I was looking at the 35 range, but you know, it’s still a lot of money for a pickup truck.

That’s what I’m excited about because it’s got this amazing talk statistic. I mean, am I ever gonna, am I ever going to use that? I mean, it just seemed a bit, um, Yeah, anyway, so it was that the waters were further muddied by the fact that last summer, the truck that we had, um, for a road trip for our Route 66 road trip, there’s another pod about that was a, um, me and my son, it was a F 250.

Um, he loved the super duty thing about it. Um, he loved the towing mirrors as, as well. Um, and it had a 6. 2 gas motor, which I understand absolutely bulletproof is what they say. [00:13:00] It’s very much, but, but it’s like a work truck. And, um, my wife is like, Oh, I’d like leather, you know, if I’m, if it’s going to be like our money, I’d like it to be leather.

And I’m thinking to myself, that’s not unreasonable, is it? That’s not an unreasonable ask. She’s like, you know, she’s, uh, so, but you to try and find, you know, the Lariat ones, gussied up wheels don’t like, didn’t like that. Rare. You’re spending like on a 20 grand truck, you’re spending like 25 to get a Lariat one with the same miles and you’re looking at, you know, this is be like, uh, we’re in 2024.

Now this would be like a 2015 2016 truck that’s going to have 200, 000 miles on it. And I’m just like, you know, gas one, not a diesel one and gas one. Diesel ones are more. Um, these are Ford’s terrible reputation for reliability, but it doesn’t seem to hurt the values. Yeah, so I was all about the Rams and I was in and I was out and probably a year went [00:14:00] by and I had, um, I mean, I’ve had two trucks.

Um, by, you know, lemon squad. So there was one in Dallas that I was interested in where, you know, and my thought was that the inspector would, would look at it and that would include photos and he would test drive it. So if it was good, I could, you know, if it seemed right, I can negotiate a price fly into town.

I’m not spending 20, 30, 000 on a vehicle. Unless I buy it. Bloody well driven it right, fly it down, drive it and you know, but this, this ram that they looked at, I mean, the price was good on it. And of course you get what you pay for, don’t you? And, uh, um, it, uh, I mean, it, it pulled to one side, it scrubbed the tires, it hard shifted at 40 miles an hour, which I understand is an Asian kind of thing, but like, I’m not, it just like, it had just been used like a work truck and, and, [00:15:00] and, uh, so I didn’t, you know, I walked away from that one.

Went cold on the whole thing again and then I came back and I was enthusiastic and I should say over Christmas, you know, I even spent a while looking at escalate because ultimately there’s a towing that I want, you know, an escalate with 400 horsepower that 6. 2. It’s the luxury interior. It’s but, you know, I kind of want to do like off roadie stuff and, you know, my son’s like truck, not SUV truck, not SUV.

Hey, And, you know, you shouldn’t be influenced by that, but like, obviously I am, um, But he was also like no Toyota. So, you know, I thought of Tundras because they are so like, because everyone knows how their value and that bulletproof and, you know, a million, you know, UN relief agencies and Mujahideen and, you know, Uh, can’t be wrong kind of thing.

There is that element, uh, you know, uh, about them. Um, [00:16:00] yeah, I mean, and, and that morning where I was going to drive that Chevy and then, uh, look at this one. I was just like Chevy, the Chevy was two years newer at 140, 000 miles. This Tundra I’ve got is a 2016, not an 18. It has 198 when I bought it. Um, And just a word on that, right?

You see them advertised with 300 plus. This is a one owner clean Carfax truck. There’s a lot of them like that, right? I look, I was looking at three that were like that within 500 miles of, of San Francisco here. Um, so I didn’t want to go as far, right? And this, what happened was I just had like a rush of blood to the head where I was like, The problem with these, you know what it is, is we went to visit friends up in, uh, Napa.

They had like a party at their house up in Healdsburg. Lovely spread, like, lovely spread by, by [00:17:00] vineyard, like. And, and as we’re driving up there, I’m thinking, would I be happy driving that dual wheel ram with its, I looked at one dual wheel ram that was, uh, Uh, had a, it had been used on a branch in the Dakotas and it had like a great big ball bar on it, like a high ball bars at high ground clearance.

And that’s where like rocking up at their nice little place at that nice little house. And you know, there’s all these fucking Teslas and hybrid fucking Toyotas parked up. I’m like, you know, I. Don’t want to cause offense, you know, I never did. I always loved heavy metal, but I never wanted to have the overkill t shirt with fuck you on it, not least because it didn’t like overkill because I never felt like that.

I never wanted to be like, you know, this ram would be too much of a You know, [00:18:00] and I don’t even mean like an I mean a modern one with that big grill on and the deal with all of it is, is too much. Um, and if it can’t be used for that kind of excursion from the city. Which the BM BMW is too long in the tooth for, and the Mercedes is too knackered for.

And the fiesta is just too much of an asshole on any long journey for ’cause. It’s like Berg’s, you know, like an hour and a bit away. And we’re gonna be driving back late at night, you know, by the bull. Maybe if I’ve had a few beers, too many Dana needs to drive. Again. The fiesta not an option there ’cause it’s a stick, right?

This guy, he’s just fine. So fundamentally these tundras, they’re like land cruisers with. Tailgates. Oh. You can get them with like, you know, basically like a BMW 7 Series backseat or a BMW 3 Series backseat. The 3 Series ones they’re called double cabs and they’ve got like an alpha 156 hidden in the [00:19:00] B pillar.

Hidden in the C pillar kind of door handle and you know enough room for like a non american sized adult in the back The crew max is the name of the ones with like the big rear in them. They’re basically like Suburbans like you’ve got a lot of room in the back Especially the high trim ones with like the leather the high trim Tundra is called the 17 94 how cool Cheesy is that, I mean, it’s a, if, if you don’t know the Ford King Ranch, the 1794 seems pretty cheese dick until you know the Ford King Ranch and the King Ranch is my word.

Like, I mean I like him ’cause I don’t take myself seriously. But I mean, look, look at photos online there. The interiors on King ranches particularly are just bloody incredible. Well, so the limited is the one down from the. Like chintz of the 1794. There was [00:20:00] a 1794 for sale, right? Uh, similar miles, newer, um, at Toyota dealership as well.

Um, but like five grand more. And I’m like, you know what, I don’t need the, like, you know, I mean, the one I’ve got has got a backup camera on it, which is bloody useful. Like, I never thought I’d say that, but it’s really useful because I’m not used to the length of it. So I could just like, you know, back up and yeah.

Anyway, so that, uh, so I probably was going somewhere there, but I’ve completely lost my train of thought. I dare say the second coffee is wearing off and now I’m going to just. Uh, move on to my actual agenda and, uh, and logistics here of, uh, of what I was going to, what I was going to talk about with it.

So, um, yeah, so this was the process, right? So I, I, I looked at, so I was off the rams cause I was just like, they’re not practical. I need something that can at least, you know, we could use for like a visit to see friends at the [00:21:00] weekend or, you know, if, if, and literally if we go and see those friends of ours down in Santa Barbara, I’ve moved there permanently now.

Literally, right, the super duty would look like workmen were visiting. Every 250 F250 super duty you see is a work vehicle. It has a rack. It’s a work vehicle, right? I’d look like I was a workman. Yet the ram wouldn’t fit through the gates of the place into the little courtyard, right? And if it did, it like wouldn’t, you couldn’t turn it around properly and all that.

The tundra, it fits. The tundra looks all right, you know, on the school run amongst the Teslas and the Hondas, you know, it fits. It’s, you know, that. So I feel like it is a really. Good, good compromise. So anyway, so I looked at this crew max, this, that’s what I was talking about before, wasn’t I? I was talking about the crew max and the dual, the double cab, the double cab, having [00:22:00] the hidden door, the crew max, having the full light suburban back seat.

But I looked at this backseat. black crew backs when I guess there’s this special dark package that they do. I had specials earlier was it was like stickers and wheels, but this truck was a Texas truck. It was one owner clean car facts. I looked at it. It’s this scuzzy, like the scuzziest most, most Arthur daily car lot used car lot I’ve ever been to in Sacramento.

So I drove up to Sacramento And I’m looking at this truck and my first thought when I walked up to it was, it was dinged to fuck. And if I think about that, if I think it’s dinged, I think the paint is bad. If I noticed that, Jesus, the paint must have been bad, right? And, and yes, full service history, clean car facts, all of that, right?

But, You know, the 20,000 mile service I remember was done at 23,000 and change miles, and I’m just like, wow. That was his [00:23:00] first real service. And the bloke was like three and a few thousand miles late. And then you look at the interior of it, and that was the first one I’d driven when I drove this one in close, the one that I bought, it just felt newer.

Right? It’d done a. I guess that other one I’ve done 192, um, yeah, and just, and, and, right, I have to, you know, these are eye popping mileages, you know, I watch car UK league in these crappy like Hyundai’s and Kia’s and Vauxhall Corsas and, and, you know, this like one Lisa crap, five grand crap that he deals in, um, this stuff is done.

Uh, like 100 or 120 or 130, 000 miles, I guess, you know, I is a long time since I first surf copart. I noticed that all of the cars with more than 200, 000 miles on them were either Hondas or Toyotas or a few BMWs and Mercedes, [00:24:00] but you know that the BMWs and Mercedes, the person spent an arm and a leg keeping the go.

And you look at these Toyotas and Hondas, they were Camrys, they were Accords, they were wearing a quarter of a million. Miles and you know, the interiors were fine and, and, you know, uh, um, friend of mine, uh, I mean, Mark Newton, who’s, I think on one of the early, well, he is on one of the early episodes. I don’t know which number it is.

I can’t remember what we called it, but, uh, he, he always says about Toyota, he’s a trained Toyota mechanic. You always say it’s only when you beat on them. I mean, really beat on them that then you understand the difference. So this truck, I bought 198, 000 miles. Split in the driver’s seat. Bit of dirt on the shifter.

Bit of dirt on the armrest. Bed has clearly been used. Probably got a new tailgate on it. Bit of paint on the side. But underneath? I mean It looks [00:25:00] like a vehicle that’s less than a year old. If you’re used to looking at vehicles on the East Coast or in England or in Germany or anywhere where they solve the roads, it’s just, you know, as you like underneath.

Yeah, so this Sacramento one, sorry, I’m jumping around it. Um, the Sacramento one. So I’m looking at it. My first thought was dinged up love this black package that it had on it had like blacked out grill and it’s kind of cheesy wheels. But you know, you can fix that easily. Can’t you bloke doesn’t even come out and speak to me.

So I walk in the shack and it is a shack and it’s like, you know, and the other thing I should say is that it is beautiful. It’s balls hot. It’s like, you know, 110 degrees, right? And, uh, I’ve driven like the two hours up to find him. And, uh, so we talked for a little bit. And, uh, he’s not, he’s not stood up from his desk.

And I said, can I do it for a test drive? I monosyllabic then as well. He didn’t, mother, not English as a first language. And, [00:26:00] uh, Anyway, long and short, I get the keys in my hands, he tells me to go right, right and right, away from the dealership, and I’m like, yeah. No. So I roll away from the dealership, like making sure the truck’s gonna get up, heat up properly somewhere where I can, you know, do a proper brake test, all of that.

Um, I lay on the ground and looked after, I mean, but it’s too bloody hot to lie on the tarmac. That’s the thing with it, right? So looking at this truck properly was, was not easy, but you know, I feel like I managed it. You know, it was sand, right? But I knew that the grey one that I ended up buying was just It just felt like that was more of what, um, Rabbit Pits, um, you know, what, what Rob Pits, the, the, the rabbit, um, rest in peace, rabbit, you were a great storyteller.

Um, What old, uh, old rabbit would describe as a, as a pawpaw truck. It had the feel of a pawpaw truck. Um, uh, when I was on the [00:27:00] test drive with the Toyota guy, I was like, what’s that? There’s a button on the, uh, uh, under their driver mirror there. And I was like, what’s that button again? It’s worn away. I was like, what was that button there?

And he went away. It’s obviously been kept in a garage because that’s the button for like the, the button has built into the car for the remote garage. Opener. I mean, yeah, so, uh, so yeah, so I had, um, Considered other things. I mean, I did book to, there was a morning where I booked to go and look at an F 250 and then of the morning was just like, no, I just can’t do the work truck with the long wheelbase, which, you know, just would have been ridiculous for, uh, um, this Tundra is pretty ridiculous as, as, as it is, but I feel like, so I, I’ve touched all the bases.

I’ve got something which could tow all of my shit and won’t, Need any maintenance and fits anywhere and fits into the background anywhere, especially in California. Awesome. That’s what I [00:28:00] what I wanted. I’m a superb drive. You know, it just works for me. My wife described it as not embarrassing. And you know, we’re using it for the school camping trip, which I’m meant to be packing for as I’m as I’m practicing now.

Um, And, you know, the boy’s happy because I’ve got a truck and I’ve stopped talking about it. He keeps opening and closing the tailgate and leaping up into it and climbing over into the bed by standing on the wheel, which, you know, is scratching the side of it. But, you know what I mean? I’m like, whatever.

Um, and that is the thing with it, right? That’s the other thing about getting a Toyota is, is not only is it this bulletproof reliability, but I’m not sad watching it sit out in the street and bust away. I’m like, whatever. You know, I don’t know. It’s Toyota, you know, and the reality is even with a hundred, a hundred thousand more miles on it, you know, it’s still be worth, you know, I, there are T one hundreds with 350,000 miles on them from the mid nineties [00:29:00] that were on Craigslist and that offer up and, and Facebook for five and, and $7,000 because they’re in clean condition.

And that’s, you know, it’s, it’s uh, you know, the value hold. So yeah, so the dealership was down in Clovis, so I, uh, I drove down there in the Mercedes, balls hot, along Highway 152, super picturesque, really enjoyable drive. And not much to report, really. I mean, I, I, uh, looked around it stupidly, forgot to look under the hood before we got out on the test drive.

And I never did look. I didn’t look under the hood until we got back to the dealership. But I was so when I noticed it had pain on the door. Um, and thought that it probably had a new tailgate or paint on the tailgate that set me worried, worrying that it had been hit. And as I spent a long time in the shade, rolling around underneath it, trying to see if it convinced myself that it hadn’t basically been hit inside.

The test [00:30:00] drive, I mean, weird, right? Because we get up on this highway, on this concrete highway, and it’s pulling to one side. And I’m like. And the dude’s like, yeah, they all do that. And I’m thinking that sounds like their worst fucking line. They all do that. The test drive route right from the dealership has trucks pulling and, you know.

That that’s meant to be like, you know, but yeah, it seems that it is for the first 500 miles. I drove the truck because after that first piece of freeway, it didn’t pull again. But for the first 500 miles, I drove the truck. Anytime I pulled to either side, I was terrified that I’d bought something that had been hit and the frame was was twisted.

Uh, no, I, I’m, I’m here to tell you it didn’t pull. Drives straight as it does have a problem with losing tire pressure on one front tire. And obviously you let that go too low. There is a pool there, but, but, uh, you know, [00:31:00] fundamentally, um, thing drives straight. So Toyota of Clovis change your test drive route guys.

Idiotic test drive route, because your first impression is that things pull into the right and it’s not, it’s a terrible piece of freeway, nothing to do with the truck. Um, you know, literally it’s the road, not the truck, but my word, that did not showcase the truck to its best. That really, um, I went to bed, I ended up having to stay over in Clovis and I went to bed, I’m in the motel that night thinking, Yeah, because I had to pay him the cash in the morning.

That’s the way that it worked out. So. But I went to bed thinking, God, I hope the thing doesn’t pull, and worrying that I hadn’t looked under the hood thoroughly, and when I had looked under the hood, it had been warm, so I couldn’t, you know, check the oil properly and all of that. It wasn’t warm when I started it, which was great, because then you could tell there was nothing, you know, no problem out of the tailpipe.

It’s been cleaned up under the hood, which [00:32:00] is, is, you know, which is fine, right? It had done 200, 000 miles, clearly had a life before. Um, It’s got a bed liner in it. Um, don’t know what the bed’s like underneath it. Looked not too, not rusty, which is the thing you worry about. But, but, you know, it’s like Clovis.

It was sold new at that dealership in Clovis. It was serviced there and in Clovis had all the changes at another place in Clovis. It had that its whole life. You know, you’re like, you are, um, you know, you’re buying a true desert state vehicle with, with it. All right. All right. Good. Yeah. So I drove down the inner Mercedes, um, then left the Mercedes at the dealership, took the truck home and then the following Monday morning, scooped up a U Haul and went back to Clovis, loaded the Mercedes 116 degrees on the dashboard, loaded the Mercedes and then drove home.

Always on that beautiful Highway 152, um, do a street [00:33:00] view of it past the, the lakes there. Um, But it’s, it’s between Gilroy and, uh, and Highway 5, um, super picturesque, super picturesque. Um, and Clovis is nice. It’s sort of a nice bit of Fresno. I guess I didn’t realize it was a suburb of, uh, of Fresno before, but I liked it.

I like Clovis. It’s a brick town, which is quite unusual at the center of it is a brick town, which is really unusual in California. And of course, it speaks to a really old town in California because it’s a town that was clearly built before the 1906 earthquake, when everyone realized, or at least all the, uh, all the recent transplants from other places realized, uh, the way that california is with earthquakes and uh stopped building out of brick and started building out of things that are more easily and cheaply rebuilt yeah so the drive is awesome right it’s a beautiful drive um uh the truck itself um i mean coming up past the [00:34:00] cliff house here towing the mercedes coming up past the cliff house home it kicked down one gear to go from You know, I was only doing like 25 or 30 miles an hour, but it kicks down one gear to go from like turning over at 1750 rpm to turning over at like 2250 rpm.

Um, it really has great power between three and four thousand rpm and I had it towing up a steep grade at 65 miles an hour with the cruise set and it just, it just did it. If, if you ask too much of the cruise, it doesn’t strain around. It just. turns the cruise off. And as you drive it on the throttle, um, on the decent, um, it went down, went down a gear or went up a gear.

What would it be? It would be whatever it, it changed ratios to use engine braking to keep it at 65 miles an hour in a beautiful controlled kind of, uh, kind of a [00:35:00] way. I don’t mean 65 miles an hour, by the way, you haul, I mean 55. Miles an hour. I mean, at no point did I exceed 55 miles an hour while towing, um, for the purposes of, uh, because that’s the limit with U Haul equipment, believe it or not, which 18 wheelers and so on and back, you know, I quite enjoy just pottery, you know, I’m, I’m fine with, uh, with, with that and I have every reason to believe that, you know, it would tow with, with stability, uh, speeds far beyond, uh, Um, that 55 miles an hour that I, I just mentioned, um, not that I indulged in, in any of that activity because of course the equipment was, uh, was, was new to me.

I’ve positioned it up there that it moved quite smoothly through, but really there was like whenever you buy a car, there’s always like hassle and you have to see one person, you have to see another person and then you have to like wait until the bank opens in the morning. Oh, [00:36:00] but you know, if I’d have brought a checkbook, I wouldn’t have needed to, you know, that, that kind of thing.

So I, I, uh, you know, I could have prepared better, um, You know, when I prepared myself to think very clearly about the truck, but I hadn’t prepared myself for anything that happened after that, um, in terms of how to pay for it and all of that, you know, so that I skillfully so I, I, uh, found it surprisingly familiar, actually, and have found it surprisingly familiar in the, you know, I did spend that summer, um, working as hot air balloon crew where the vehicles, there was a Peugeot 504.

Station wagon and Citroen C35 vans that Gami and I have talked about in another of these of these pods, but, but, but we, uh, there were also 3 Toyota pickup trucks, basically 1st generation Tacomas. They weren’t badged as that because it was in Europe, but that’s what they, that’s what they were, like, early 90s Tacomas and 4x4s, Subaru manual transmission, 5 [00:37:00] speed manuals.

Um, And, uh, previous previous, we used to race the previous, um, they do 118 miles an hour flat out with the overdrive off only 115 with the overdrive on. Allegedly, so I was familiar with the trucks, but, um, at that point, um, obviously, Mark Newton. Swear Biden, John Garcia, um, has had a gold one for years, which is a manual transmission 2001 and, uh, it’s like trebled in value, um, since he, when he first bought it, it was like a 5, 000, you know, five year old pickup truck and, and, you know, now it’s like, you know, manual transmission, four wheel drive, four cylinder, you know, bulletproof spec kind of, uh, kind of thing in nice condition.

Yeah. Um, you know, so it’s like a 10, 000 truck now. Yeah, and a surprisingly different vehicle, although similar in feel to, to, to mine. I mean, mine. Uh, feels like [00:38:00] a land cruiser, um, and it is sized like a domestic US pickup truck. And that’s really what appeals to me about it is here is a domestic US pickup truck, domestic in every sense.

The 350 cubic inch normally aspirated V8, the automatic transmission, the bed that’s big enough to fit a Harley. You know, you’d think I was talking about a Chevy or a Ford or a Ram, wouldn’t you? But now you’re going to ally that with this bulletproof build quality, which, you know, you might say, Oh, it’s not so bulletproof now.

No, but the value proposition is that it’s bulletproof. And what I didn’t realize You know the value that the reputation is that so they hold their value, you know, so just hold their value better than anything better than modern BMW better than modern Mercedes, you know, because everyone knows they’re complicated and fragile.

That’s the other thing to say about it is that the Fords with their turbos or even the the Ford motor, it’s a five liter that the V8 motors of the [00:39:00] Mustang motor. It’s a five liter that makes 400 horsepower now, but the Chevy’s a five three liter. Makes 335. You know, that tells you how much less stress the Chevy Metro is the RAM as a five seven.

I don’t know what horsepower that makes. I just wouldn’t do a RAM that wasn’t like a duly for build quality again, right? This is a market against like somehow I could forgive Chrysler build quality for, you know, if I was going to get the dual wheel, like, no, right? Just do this. Toyota is never going to go wrong.

The moment I sat in it and I could, it just looked like a truck that had done 20,000 miles or 40,000 miles, not one that had done nearly 200. I mean, yeah, it, it’s, uh, that was what, uh, was what sold me on it. So I did visit the Toyota factory. It was like Starling grad, you know, they, uh, uh, the state renamed the community.

Toyota, the community where the factory was [00:40:00] located, Toyota. Um, I can’t remember the full details. I mean, it’s Toyota family, Toyota family. Um, they, Toyota’s more easily pronounced in Europe and America. So that’s why they, they did that. It’s also something to do with the syllables and being lucky in, in, Japanese.

I learned all of this on the guided tour I had of, of, of Toyota Tau. And I say it’s like Stalingrad because, you know, the community was named after this entity which is going to rebuild the community, you know, or in the case of Stalingrad, you know, stop the, uh, the, the advance. Uh, sewing machine, British sewing machine patent.

I remember that that was how Toyota made their money, um, that they reproduced. They did all these sewing machines and then with the money that they made from that. Um, they, uh, bought the patent out and then the money they made from that, they pivoted to making cars. Um And that was when, um, the Toyota renaming took place.

That [00:41:00] was post war, 1950, something like that. Of course, it was post war because they needed to rebuild. So this is the essence of, of, of Toyota. So you may know that story about Satura Honda, that when the Model T comes to Honda’s village for the first time, it drops some oil, that first Model T, and he goes Into the street after it’s gone and he dips his finger in the oil and he tastes it.

You were a Honda racing engineer for Honda Motorcycles. When Honda san came to the track, when he came to the track, when the boss man came to the track, if your bike wasn’t the fastest one down the straight, that was a great dishonor and you felt in danger of your job. Because Honda engines were The most powerful and that was what he, but that’s Honda, right?

This Formula One history with Senna or whatever. Toyota’s none of that. [00:42:00] Toyota’s rebuild the nation. That’s why there’s no thought of how to. you know, make the car good to drive or fast or anything like that. Why would you do that? You buy machine tools who are the best Mercedes Benz, right? We buy machine tools from Mercedes Benz.

How are they styling their cars over like this? You know, they’ve gone to a two blob headlight style like my E55. Well, the next GS300 has exactly the same two blob headlight style, even though it’s different. to this day looks a bit ungainly. I personally, I personally like it, right? But it’s definitely, um, an, an acquired taste and they, they, Toyota and Lexus in that case, just unashamedly copy that Lexus LS 400 was a straight copy of the Mercedes S class of, of that era.

They’re shame, they were shameless about delivering what they were going to, to, to deliver. And this is Um, you know, with the pickup truck, you’re just like, yeah, I just want it not to go wrong. I want And it’s curious there are elements of the design which remind you of [00:43:00] ford because it’s cheap feeling But it’s like the materials are ford grade but the Build quality is Mercedes, you know, in the 80s, you know, it’s this bulletproof screwed together of cheap materials and it really reflects in this truck and it’s why I’ve, uh, why I bought it.

I did indulge in a little bit of high four around some cheap materials. You know, I stopped for a pee. Of course, that’s the other thing that’s awesome about it. Everywhere you go, there’s a urinal, right? You just park at the side of the road, walk around the truck, open the passenger door, there’s your urinal.

Like it just rules that truck. Anyway, well, I did that at the side of the road. And then I was like, this was obviously not when I was telling this, when I was driving at home, I was like, you know what? Listen, I’ll just do a lap of this little, you know, fruit section here. There was wide, there was a wide path there, so I had it in two wheel drive.

Bit of jigsaw hazard, had it in I 4 for a little bit. I only did about 40, 50 miles an hour. Gonna have to find somewhere to do that properly. Really good [00:44:00] traction truck felt. Really, really good. Haven’t tested low four yet to jump back to the day, the day of the pickup. So I, you know, it took me like four hours to get down there.

So it’s like heat of the day, like early afternoon by the time I’m loading, because I made sure I had like food and water before, because it’s this bloody 116 degrees. Of course, it’s California. So all the shady parts. I’ve got like homeless people in their tents living in, which is fair enough, right? I got nowhere else to go if I can be there, if they could be anywhere else with that.

So I’m not knocking them for that. But it means that I’m out in the middle of the Home Depot car park, Home Depot car park, you know, taking up to parking spaces, you know, loading up, putting the axles, putting the chains. over the axles. I was out lying on the ground for a little bit and then I had to like shift my shoulder position because the tarmac is too fucking hot to lie on.

So of course didn’t bring gloves stupidly I brought tools and everything but [00:45:00] didn’t think to bring gloves some my hands are absolutely filthy because they are a mercedes it’s like obviously he’s 160, 000 miles of leaking power steering and oil and you know or so the, You know, there’s some hands filthy from all of that from sorting out, you know, the differentials leaking a little so I’m like covered from that, you know, that was like at the back and anyway, so I go in the Home Depot to, you know, use the loo, right?

Well, it’s being cleaned. Just two dudes in line already. We’re all like fidgety, we all like need to go. So I’m like trying to go in the ladies, but the door keeps closing before I can get in, and we’re not allowed to know the codes or just Anyway, so that was, uh, uh, that was drama. That was like, um, five or six of us eventually demanded that we be allowed into the ladies and, uh I just went ahead and, uh, did what I needed to do and of course made a massive [00:46:00] mess of the sink, um, washing, uh, uh, all the crap off my hands after I’d, uh, peed out all the Gatorade that I’d been drinking to, uh, keep my, keep my strength up.

So, yeah. So, uh, yeah. And then the scenic route home towing, as I say, it’s absolutely a beautiful sunset that evening. I remember towing, um, you know, when it tows on cruise, just just absolutely no problem at all. So really sort of made up with with the purchase. The family are happy with it as well. It’s just the icing on the cake.

So, um, that’s how I ended up with the Tundra. Thank you, DriveThru.[00:47:00]

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