The 2025 Toyota Tundra is once again a solid contender for those of you who need a truck, something that allows for plenty of room for work and / or family, easy clean-up and decent gas mileage, given that it weighs three tons.
Assuming you are decent at personal navigation, this beast is easy to drive. All you have to do is pay attention and make sure your passengers are strapped in.
Debuting in the U.S. just after Y2K, the Tundra has proven for the last quarter-century that it can keep up with the Ram, Ford F-Series and Chevy Trucks.
Standard (on base models) is a twin-turbo 3.5-liter V6 engine that creates 358 horsepower and 405 pound-feet of torque. That sounds like a lot of power, and it is, but you will need all of it to get this three-ton-Tessie moving.
Driving is indeed a breeze. Suspension, road grip, all aspects of handling and response take all the anxiety out of operating this gentle giant. You can get just about any configuration you want (short bed, long bed, crew cab) for your Tundra, and you can get it as stylized as you like.
It even comes as a hybrid, though no electric version is available.
I tested the TRD Rally edition of the Tundra (pictured here): the TRD trims are the performance runway stars for the brand, and if you ask the AI Overview on your search engine, it will tell you that this particular truck is “a heritage-inspired, off-road aesthetic to the Tundra SR5 model.”
Okay, that sounds about right to me.
As always, make sure you have room for a truck and that you honestly need one. These are really big vehicles. Unless you have a driveway or live outside the city, I would advise against keeping one of these even as your weekend vehicle.
Bigger isn’t always better, but it is always fun, even if just for the weekend.
The Christmas / Holiday season is finally upon us. Now is a good time to reflect on how fortunate we are – and for Americans to use any year-end health-plan benefits that may soon expire (those of us who still have health insurance).
It does not look likely that tax credits for the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obama Care, will be extended by Congress. That means that working people who rely on those credits to stay healthy so they can continue to work and take care of their families (golly, what a novel concept), will likely see their health insurance premium increase, often exponentially.
(Note: Outside the U.S., this notion of having the pay thousands of dollars for the ‘privilege’ of seeing a doctor is, how shall we say, a foreign concept.)
It is beyond Crazy-Town right now here in the land of the free. The giddiness of November 4 has given way to an all-out assault on democracy and a true void in national leadership. If it feels as though we, as LGBTQIA2S++ are on our own without even a flashlight or a plastic butter knife, yeah, well….
(On a good note: Thank you, Miami! Sanity was lost in 1993 when the Golden Girls / Golden Palace left that oceanside town, but today, their spirit has been restored.)
Sorry for dovetailing. Dove. Tail. Gosh, where has my Jimmy-Carter-voting mind gone?
