The Toyota Tundra pick-up from the US – a rival to the Ram 1500 and Chevrolet Silverado – has been caught on camera in the middle of Australia as testing continues ahead of the first customer-evaluation vehicles due late 2023.
The Toyota Tundra pick-up from the US is being put through its paces in the middle of Australia ahead of planned customer-evaluation vehicle deliveries by this time next year.
As with the Ram 1500 and Chevrolet Silverado 1500, the Toyota Tundra will arrive in Australia from the US in left-hand drive before being remanufactured to right-hand drive locally with more than 500 specially-engineered components.
All three US pick-ups are remanufactured to right-hand drive locally by the Walkinshaw Automotive Group on behalf of Ram Trucks Australia, Chevrolet and Toyota – but in different facilities and with separate engineering and production teams.
While Ram led the US pick-up market revival locally – closely followed by Chevrolet – Toyota is taking a more cautious approach, taking four years and building 300 validation vehicles in addition to the first handful of tooling prototypes before approving the Tundra program.
Even with this investment, Toyota has so far not formally confirmed the Tundra will make it to showrooms.
The three vehicles in these photos – caught on camera between Darwin and Alice Springs in the Northern Territory – are a mix of prototypes and validation vehicles. They are not part of the customer-evaluation fleet.
The photos show two of the Tundras have already been converted to right-hand drive while one is still left-hand drive, presumably being used for additional stress-testing of the core vehicle’s components.
Toyota says it will await the outcome of results from 300 customer-evaluation vehicles (the first of which are due to be built from the middle of next year and reach selected fleet and private customers in late 2023) before giving the program the green light and adding the Toyota Tundra to its national showroom line-up.
If approved, the arrival of the Toyota Tundra in the booming US pick-up market in Australia is certain to cause some angst among Ram, Chevrolet and Ford (which is due to introduce the F-150 next year, pending any delays).
Toyota has more than 250 dealers, while Ram and Chevrolet each have about 50 dealers.
Ford – which is yet to provide its latest update on the progress of the F-150 – has a national network of about 180 showrooms.
Our thanks to reader Jim for sharing these photos. Have you spotted an upcoming vehicle in the wild? Email us at askdrive@drive.com.au, or contact us on Facebook.
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