The Heavy-Duty, Hard-Hauling 2005 Toyota Tundra
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

You load 16 Tundras, and what do you get? Well, 743 cubic feet of load space for one thing. It’s an area seemingly big enough to provide your pickups’ combined cargo beds with an Arctic wilderness designation and subsequent petition for oil drilling rights. Come to think of it, that could be good news, as each unit of your 36-ton fleet’s going to be burning fuel at a rate of between 15 to 18 miles a gallon. You also get combined hauling capacity of 113,600 pounds (that’s 7,100 a truck), and 64 doors if you opt for 16 Double Cab Tundras like the one we tested. The four-door Double Cabs are full crew cabs capable of carrying up to six occupants each when equipped with a three passenger front bench seat rather than with a pair of buckets.
Also, at a base price of $27,000 a unit (and forsaking any volume discount), you also get another day older and some $432,000 deeper in debt.
Introduced for 2004, the Double Cab extended an American-built Tundra lineup that consisted of two-door conventional cabs and extended versions that Toyota still refers to as Access Cabs. Unlike the Double Cab, with its set of four regular doors, the Access Cab has a pair of small, rear-hinged portals that can be opened only after the front doors have been. With a three-passenger split-fold rear seat and more deeply set (6.1-foot) bed than the other models have, the Double Cab also has a bigger frame. Measuring 3 inches higher and 4 inches wider than its stable-mates, this vast, empty Tundra is similar in size to its Ford F-150 competition, a truck that Tennessee Ernie might still be advertising were it not for the fact that he actually did go when St. Peter called him.
Relative to the first-ever 2004 model, the new Double Cab benefits from having more power, a new transmission, and available front- and curtain side airbags for both seating rows. It comes standard with a 4.7-liter V8 providing 282-horsepower engine (which is 42 more than last season) that is mated to a five-speed automatic with one more speed than its 2004 predecessor does. All Tundras have rear-wheel, all-wheel, or four-wheel drive (with low-range gearing), as well as anti lock brakes. However, only Double Cabs come with available antiskid-traction control and a limited-slip differential set somewhere between their running boards.
With fat bars color-keyed in Spectra Blue Micra spanning its downcast grille, the test Double Cab’s traditional samurai grimace seemed to blend into the sculpted hood line with an aquatic air. However, there was nothing fishy about the rest of the truck, as the aquaman routine quickly yielded to the design demanded of a large, crewcab pickup big enough to suggest a geographical area with something more than just its name.
Our Double Cab’s cloth and vinyl interior was terrifically car-like and exhibited the superior levels of materials and workmanship that are characteristic of Toyotas. The $35,000 truck was a higher-priced four-wheel-drive Limited edition, which meant that it also came with a CD player, fog lights, and 17-inch tires mounted on alloy wheels, among other features. We sat in it before a dashboard filled with plain and well-organized instruments that included a radio for which a perusal of the owner’s manual wasn’t an operational prerequisite. The Double Cab’s exclusive running boards led to comfortable captain’s chairs up front, and via easily accessed rear doors, to an equally commodious raised rear bench seat.
We struck out one morning in the drizzling rain. Although the tall Tundra could not transcend physical laws governing its tendency to lean in curves, its double-wishbone, independent front suspension exhibited excellent ride quality over most surfaces, even when wet. However, if the new V8 outperformed last year’s 240-horsepower version, we didn’t notice it. What was more the ultra-smooth steering seemed a bit ponderous and isolated, and, despite the improvement made by its four-wheel antilock braking system, the Tundra still needed room to maneuver and stop.
With fuel prices beginning to fall, the full-size family pick-up truck may not yet be ready to go the way of the unexplored oil patch, as we once predicted. Still – with one fist of iron, the other of steel (well, I guess it’s pretty much all steel) – the Tundra should be seen as a purposeful, heavy-duty truck.