Author Archive for Jason Lancaster

GMC Sierra Top Quality? JD Power Survey Inconsistent

Last week JD Power announced their 2010 Initial Quality Survey results, and top honors went to the Chevy Avalanche and the GMC Sierra (which were tied for first). Ford’s F150 and the Nissan Frontier were close behind, ranking 3rd and 4th respectively.

How can two trucks built at the same factory have two different quality ratings?

The trouble is, there’s no WAY that the GMC Sierra should have won anything.

2011 Tundra To Adopt New Trailer Towing Standards

During the last 20 years, the manufacturer-stated maximum tow capacity of the typical half-ton pickup truck has skyrocketed. Take a look at the increase in maximum tow rating for America’s best-selling pickup, the Ford F-150:

As you can see, the F-150’s towing power has increased by 66% over the last 20 years…or at least that’s what Ford says. If you think about all the electronics and improved efficiency – not to mention dramatic improvements in transmissions – it certainly seems plausible that today’s F-150 is 66% better at pulling than it was 20 years ago.

However, there are a couple of reasons to doubt these numbers:

What’s New At TundraHeadquarters.com – Your Input Is Needed

This is a quick housekeeping announcement for the people who regularly visit the site (all four of you) along with a short survey that will help me make the site better.

What’s new:

Building a Rock Star Tundra – Performance Mods

This is the second post in a series about the Rock Star Tundra build-out. Be sure to check out the first post if you haven’t seen it already.

Chris's Tundra with brakes, wheels, tires, suspension, and performance mods - get the full story below

Now that Chris had finally found the right truck, it was time focus on making the stock 5.7 Tundra Crew a better performer. First up – better brakes.

Tundra Could Overtake Ram Sales in 2010

Last week PickupTrucks.com published an excellent break-down of 2010 pickup truck sales through the first four months of 2010. While there are a lot of interesting takeaways, the one that jumps out at us is the fact that the Tundra could outsell the Ram in 2010. To be clear, knocking off the Ram is still only good enough for 3rd place…and close is a relative term (Toyota is still about 3,000 units short). Here are the numbers:

Does this mean anything? Not really. Depending on how you look at it, it can be a positive:

• The Tundra is gaining ground on the Ram 1500.

or a negative:

• Toyota has been aggressively incentivizing Tundra sales (along with everything else), and despite that fact they still can’t surpass the sales of the the Ram 1500.

Either way, sales figures really don’t mean anything.