Author Archive for Jason Lancaster
Jason Lancaster is the editor and founder of TundraHeadquarters.com. He has nearly a decade of experience on the retail side of the auto industry, and another decade of experience of the part and accessory side of the industry.
Toyota and The American Auto Worker
If you’re a patriotic American and you drive a Toyota, you know first-hand the number of people that attempt to draw a distinction between “being a true patriot” and “driving a foreign car.” With the Tundra, the loyalties of Ford, Dodge, and GM owners are especially pronounced. It’s quite common to speak with someone who owns or drives a domestic brand and here a comment – whether a simple tease or an out-right insult – about the lineage of the Tundra.
To anyone who doubts the “American” credentials of the Tundra, or Toyota in general, we point to the following:
Leveling Out A Heavy Load – Air Bag Suspensions
Heavy duty suspension systems are a key component of being able to tow large trailers or haul massive amounts of cargo safely and with full control. Springs which are designed to facilitate this kind of driving while fully loaded are able to maintain their height under the mass of whatever is being moved. This keeps a truck level and helps the entire suspension system perform at its best without sacrificing any control while cornering or braking. Unfortunately, in order to exhibit this characteristic, heavy springs must be extremely stiff, which makes the vehicle subject to a harsher, bouncier ride when not under load.
From left to right, a visual explanation of the benefits of an air-lift suspension system.
Air springs have been used in place of coil and leaf springs for decades
Tundra Headquarters Blog Goals For 2009
The Tundra Headquarters website has grown by leaps and bounds during the last 2 years or so, and we now enjoy more than 20k visitors a month! While this is very exciting, the fact is many Toyota Tundra owners have never even heard of us! Here’s what we’re going to do to become more popular in 2009:
- Reach out to more Tundra owners. People really seem to enjoy our ‘Featured Vehicles’ segments, and we’re going to work on boosting the number of trucks we write about.
- Boost the number of RSS and email subscribers to 500. We’ve worked on posting on a regular basis (every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday) and we’re starting to get pretty darn consistent. The next step is to increase the number of people that read our site regularly, even if it’s just from their inbox or RSS reader.
- Develop more useful resources for Tundra owners. It’s hard with all the other stuff that we’ve been doing, but it’s important to keep giving Tundra owners useful info, how-to videos, reviews, exhaust sound clips, and more.
- Ask for more reader input. We’ve done a couple of surveys and gotten some really good info and feedback on ways to improve the site, but this is an ongoing process. So, if you’ve got suggestions for making TundraHeadquarters.com better, we’d love to hear them.
P.S. You won’t hurt our feelings – let the comments fly!
ARB Sahara Bumper and Bull Bar for the Toyota Tundra
ARB announced a new “modular” Sahara bumper bull-bar combo unit for the 2007-and-up Toyota Tundra just after Thanksgiving, and we completely missed the announcement (until now). ARB, for anyone who doesn’t know, is an Australian company with a (deserved) reputation for building top-quality off road gear. They’re especially well-known for their solid steel winch bumpers that offer a great mounting surface for a winch, Hi-Lift jacking points, and enough steel to blast thru almost any obstacle.
The new Sahara bar offers a chrome hoop top bar that installs above the bumper. The idea is that the grill and hood (and the radiator underneath) aren’t quite protected by the solid steel bumper, so adding the hoop bar is a way to protect some more of the truck’s vitals. Of course the hoop bar looks pretty good, so that’s another reason to consider it.
The Sahara Bar from ARB is now available on the 2007 and up Toyota Tundra. You can find them at 4WheelParts.com.
Is Toyota Wrong To Cancel All Executive Bonuses?
Few automakers are managed as carefully and thoughtfully as Toyota Motor Company – after all, Toyota didn’t become the world’s largest and most profitable car company by making bad decisions. This year, astronomical gas prices followed by a global financial crisis have conspired to make 2008 one of the worst years ever for the global auto market (especially the US market).
Sunday, Toyota announced a decision to eliminate all executive bonuses for the current year. While this decision will save Toyota more than 1 billion yen (about $11 million dollars), it’s not really about cutting costs. The truth is that $11 million is a drop in the bucket for a company of Toyota’s size – paying out these bonuses (or not paying them) will have a nearly insignificant impact on the bottom line.
Many companies, faced with the realization that executive bonuses won’t amount to much, would likely pay them out anyways. After all, Toyota is losing $1.1 billion in the last half of the year, so what’s another $11 million? Many would argue that Toyota executives don’t deserve to lose their bonuses – they’ve done nothing wrong. Why should anyone, executive or otherwise, lose his or her bonus due to circumstances beyond their control?
