Spyder Industries Offers Unique Headache Racks for the Tundra

There’s no doubt you have seen a ‘headache rack’ installed on someone else’s truck at least once in your life. These racks, which are mounted across front edge of a pickup bed and which create a lattice of steel bars that overlays a truck’s rear window, are found in many different shapes and sizes, and feature a wide variety of designs.

Spyder Industries' spider web headache rack

While some headache racks might look purely ornamental, appearances can be deceiving. These grilles are so named due to their ability to protect window glass as well as anyone inside a truck from having a nasty one-on-one encounter with any cargo that might be loose in their truck bed, whether as the result of a sudden stop, a broken strap, or an accident. Read more…

US Army Tests HUMVEE Replacement Pickups

Everyone knows about the Humvee, the heavy-duty 4×4 that inspired the original HUMMER H1 civilian SUV. While the Humvee has served the US Army well over the past few decades, technology continually marches forward. The Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) is the program dedicated to finding the Humvee’s replacement…and to our eyes the JLTV entrants look a heck of a lot like pickup trucks.

General Tactical Vehicles JLTV entrant

The JLTV has been in development for several years under the auspices of a number of military contractors, and the primary aim of the design has been to improve on areas where the original Humvee fell short. Read more…

The Toyota Mini Motorhome – A Quirky RV With A Strong Following

In the 1970’s and 80’s the RV boom hit America hard, and with it came motorhomes and camping trailers of all different shapes and sizes.  Most people are familiar with the mammoth bus-based Winnebagos and pickup-truck mounted camper attachments, but few people remember that Toyota also got into the camping game in its own unique fashion.  Unlike other major RV players who battled over maximum trailer length and interior square footage, Toyota decided to keep things small and compact.  In doing so, they almost cornered the market on affordable and practical camping.

Toyota's Mini Motorhomes are an interesting and perhaps forgotten chapter of Toyota history

The Toyota Mini Motorhome first hit American roads in the mid-1970’s, and was based on a version of the Toyota Hilux compact pickup truck. Read more…

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. Read more…

Making Fun of Toyota’s Tundra TV Ads

“Truckers know that….blah blah blah.” I’m a HUGE fan of the Tundra, but the voice-over guy in those Tundra commercials is really starting to wear on me. To be honest, I never really liked that part of the Tundra TV ads in the first place…but since the stunts were so cool, it was easy to ignore him. Now, a few years later, the stunts are no longer fresh and I’m starting to focus on the guy who sounds like a cross between Wilford Brimley and the Cowboy from The Big Lebowski (whose name in real life is Sam Elliot).

The Tundra commercial voice-over guy sounds like a cross between these two...

So, in honor of the somewhat annoying voice in the Tundra commercials, here are a couple of gag videos found on Funny or Die. Read more…