#toyota

No one reading this will assert the current environment is anything but a seller’s market. Numerous vehicles are being hawked for many thousands (in some cases, tens of thousands) over sticker and a vast amount of machines are pre-sold before they arrive at dealerships on the back of a hauler. And all that assumes there are any rigs to be had at all.

One customer north of the border is alleging they have been denied the opportunity to buy a vehicle unless they also agreed to take roughly $3,000 worth of warranties and rustproofing. The dealer, of course, denies it all.

Thanks to Toyota’s glacier-like design cycle, a new Tundra is something most of us will experience only a few times in our adult lives. How long was the last generation around? Well, George W. Bush still had nearly three more years in the White House when the XK50 Tundra was unveiled at the Chicago Auto Show in February 2006. Yeah, it’s been a minute.

All that changed when the curtain dropped on the ’22 Tundra earlier this year. While the mighty and burly TRD Pro has gotten a lot of the press (and most of the promotional photos), there are actually about half a dozen trims on offer, some of which can be layered with options and packages.

You finally did it, didn’t you? You beautiful disaster, you did it! You spent nearly $30,000 US American dollars on thirty-seven-year-old Toyota Corolla because of a comic book, and you aren’t even mad about it. Hell, you paid a little extra for the “authentic” Fujiwara Tofu Shop decals on the doors. You. Kick. Rear. And now, after you didn’t think it could be possible to feel better about your automotive purchase, I’m going to make you feel better about your automotive purchase – because you can now buy factory-fresh parts for your Corolla AE86, straight from Toyota.

That’s right kids, through its captive motorsport brand, Gazoo Racing, Toyota is reproducing spare parts for the Corolla Levin Sprinter Trueno “AE86” as part of the GR Heritage Parts Project. The project reproduces new original parts that have been discontinued and sells them as genuine parts with a standard new part warranty, “ in order to support customers who wish to continue driving older vehicles that are full of memories and that they truly love.”

All kidding aside, you have to admit that the concept of a Heritage Parts program is great, even if the Initial D AE86 isn’t exactly your cuppa – but it sort of begs the question, what other new-age classics might be worthy of a heritage program? I’m glad you asked!

Toyota’s Instagram page posted a pic of what looks like a normal Corolla, but some Easter eggs suggest it is actually the GR version.

Several hooptie-centric road rallies take place every warm season in Front Range Colorado, including the 24 Hours of Lemons Rally, the Rocky Mountain Rambler 500 Rally, and the Colorado Gambler 500 Rally. Teams will build crazy stuff— say, a Lincoln Continental Mark IV filled with three tons of engine-heated water or a gutted Volkswagen R32 converted to a doorless post-apocalyptic Astroturf nightmare— or just acquire some random cheap car, decorate it, and beat it half to death on Rocky Mountain fire roads. As you’d expect, many of these cars go right to the nearest boneyard when the rally is over, and I find quite a few of them during my junkyard travels in northeastern Colorado. Here’s the “Good Vibes” Pontiac Vibe, found in Denver over the summer.

Two different recall campaigns were announced yesterday by Toyota. One affects the Camry, while the other is for a deficiency with some new Sienna models. Both are related to safety equipment (as most recalls usually are) with the sedan and minivan being recalled for brake and seat belt issues, respectively.

Believe it or not, the ubiquitous RAV4 has been around for two-and-a-half decades, appearing on the scene as a right-sized trucklet available in either two- or four-door guise. Remember when the RAV could be had with a removable roof? Pepperidge Farm remembers.

Twenty-five years on, the model has grown in size and cemented itself as a leader in its segment. Fun fact: the original four-door RAV was just 162 inches long, about two feet shorter than a Camry of the day, on a wheelbase of 94.5 inches. For 2022, Toyota has added a couple of extra trims and fiddled with some of its styling details.

Back in 2010, if you wanted to be seen as an eco-conscious consumer who was on the cutting edge of forward-thinking tech, you drove a Toyota Prius. Heck, even George Clooney drove one to the Oscars – and Clooney is cooler than you (or me, anyway). The Prius was such a hot seller that Toyota reportedly looked into the possibility of spinning it off into its own brand.

That, as they say, was then. Today, Toyota has fallen significantly behind market leader Tesla in the race to bring EVs to the mainstream. There are many reasons for that, of course – but big bets on stillborn hydrogen fuel cell technology and more than a little bit of overconfidence in the size of its market lead certainly played a part.

It didn’t have to be that way – and, in fact, Tesla’s trillion-dollar story could have gone very, very differently for Toyota. All they needed was a little bit of money, and a lot of cynicism.

Well, they’ve announced pricing for the non-hybrid models, anyway. Apparently putting a value on positive and negative electrons takes a bit more time. Nevertheless, we now know precisely the amount that will be hoovered from your bank account to get into a new-for-’22 Tundra.

As you’d expect, it’s a jump from the old truck.

While Toyota undoubtedly helped to popularize hybrid vehicles with the Prius, it’s been comparatively hesitant to pull the trigger on all-electric vehicles sold in its name. But things have a habit of changing and the automaker has officially revealed its first production EV.

The bZ4X crossover is Toyota’s first official attempt at a battery-electric production car and seems to check all the necessary boxes without straying too far from the brand’s modus operandi. For example, the 71.4 kWh battery yielding an estimated 285 to 310 miles of range isn’t groundbreaking. But it’s competitive and Toyota says it focused on delivering undertaxed power cells aided by water cooling to help prolong its lifespan.

Toyota has announced pricing for the 2022 GR86, with the Hachiroku receiving an MSRP of $27,700 before destination. That’s $295 cheaper than the nearly identical Subaru BRZ. Though, when you’re effectively building a sports coupe that has a literal clone of itself on sale across the street, every tiny advantage suddenly becomes relevant.

While a couple of hundred bucks aren’t likely to sway someone holding any amount of brand loyalty, it could become the deciding factor for interested parties who see the Toyobaru Twins as otherwise identical. The problem is that they actually do have distinctive personalities, despite still being overwhelmingly similar at their core, and the price difference shrinks even more once you accounted for each manufacturer’s delivery fees.

Automakers Toyota and Stellantis separately announced plans to construct lithium-ion battery plants in North America on Monday. With regulatory pressures mounting, the industry has been shifting its eggs between baskets to avoid trouble. But the ultimate goal for most brands is to transition toward selling EVs, requiring meaningful action and financial expenditures on the part of manufacturers.

We’ve already seen General Motors and Ford Motor Co. squabbling over who will nestle the biggest battery facilities between America’s Frost and Sun Belts. It’s only fitting that the remnants of the Chrysler Corporation contained in Stellantis walk the path of electrification, especially now that it’s absolutely riddled with European influence. Meanwhile, Toyota is predictably exercising a bit of caution as it similarly navigates how to modernize itself via upcoming lithium-ion plants.

In 1970, Toyota introduced the world to a pair of cars based on a new platform: The Carina sedan and the Celica sports coupe. The Carina was sold in the United States for just the 1972-73 model years and disappeared without a trace, but its Mustang-resembling Celica sibling proved to be a big sales hit on this side of the Pacific. With their truck-appropriate four-cylinder R engines, though, those U.S.-market Celicas of the 1970s were slow and tended to sound like a Hilux groaning up a mountain pass in Waziristan with a load of 15 Red Army-battling mujahideen fighters. So, Toyota widened and lengthened the second-generation Celica, yanked out the truck mill, and dropped in a straight-six. Thus was the Celica XX born in 1978, and when it arrived on our shores in the following year, it had a new name: Celica Supra!

In the beginning, someone created the buggy. Now the buggy was primitive and lacked more than a couple of horsepower, and darkness was over the surface of the automotive world because this buggy had leaf springs.

And some engineer said, “Let there be a functional suspension,” and there was a coil spring – and, if you liked Mopars, maybe a torsion bar. And this engineer called the coil spring good and the leaf spring crap. And so, there was day and night, buggy suspensions and a reasonable ride, and the engineer created cars in his own image, and old trucks were the serpent.

And so, trucks from time immemorial have been infested by poor-riding leaf springs because they could handle great loads. But these trucks, they did handle like the Leviathan, so some have moved to the proper coil spring, good and true, to hold up their cargo. The 2022 Toyota Tundra has been so blessed with coil springs, among many other improvements. But is it good?

With every mainstream automaker on the planet seeking to pad their bottom line with tasty SUV profits, the number of jacked-up wagons on offer is truly dizzying. Most of them are car-based, of course, including several in Toyota’s own wheelhouse – witness the mystifying Corolla Cross introduced this year.

This makes the 4Runner something of a glorious throwback. Perched on its toes and looking out into traffic with a lantern jaw, this SUV may be old as the hills but is enjoying some of its most robust sales to date.