The Toyota Tundra™s latest incarnation has been receiving a lot of press lately, no doubt in part fueled by Toyota™s dramatic commercials demonstrating its capabilities. The F-150, Ford™s bread and butter, has seen serious competition from Nissan™s full size Titan and this year from Toyota™s Tundra. Obviously Ford must address the competition and show-case why Ford has maintained pick-up truck leadership for over two decades.

I witnessed a side-by-side comparison of the Toyota Tundra and F-150 frames presented by Ford Motor Company. The F-150™s fully boxed frame gives the truck more strength and resistance to bending. Additionally cross-members are welded in place on both sides each frame rail, verses the Tundra™s use of bolts to hold the frame cross-members in place. The demonstration involved frame deflection when a 275 lb. load was placed on the frame and partially released. Then the load was completely released and deflection messured again.

The numbers were startling and show the F-150's frame to be much stronger. The F-150 had .287 inches of static deflection and compared to 1.297 inches for the Tundra. The full load tests were even more dramatic, with the F-150's .857 inches deflection compared to the Tundra's 3.232 inches.

Next, Ford demostrated the difference in the angular deflection of the rear leaf springs on the F-150, Tondra and Chevy Silverado with 250 lbs of torshional input.  The Ford F-150 is on the left, the Silverado in the middle and the Tundra on the right.  As you can see in the photo, the F-150 bends much less than its competition.

We were then shown the differences between the Ford F-150 and Toyota Tundra bed bolts. Physically the Ford bolt (left) is much larger than the Toyota bolt, but the real question is how much stronger it is, if at all.


Using large digital torque wrenches they invited members of the press to turn the bolts until they broke. The Tundra topped out at about 219b ft/lbs torque, the F-150 at 390 ft/lbs torque.

While strength and toughness are important in pickup trucks, today's consumers are demanding car like comfort and performance. A quiet ride is an important part of this. The F-150 (top) uses patented "quiet steel" which reduces interior road and engine noise. Toyota's (center) firewall uses standard steel with "goop" (bottom) applied to attempt to quiet it. Even with this "goop" (our highly technical term) the F-150 interior noise is 4 dBA quieter than the Tundra and 2 dBA quieter than the Silverado. Every increase of 10 dBA is twice as loud.

The next thing we were shown can be categorized as "what were they thinking?" Naturally many people use their trucks off-road. And naturally this eventually leads to some of them getting stuck. Fortunately for both Toyota and Ford truck owners the trucks have tow hooks on the front. However, if you're driving the Tundra you'd better hope you don't get stuck in mud or sand higher than the bottom of the front bumper! While Ford placed the F-150's tow hooks in recesses in the front bumper, Toyota chose to put the Tundra's under the front bumper.

Conclusion - Clearly Toyota has raised the stakes with the latest Tundra and Ford needs to catch up in the power department. However, from an engineering and usability point of view Ford shows why they've been the truck leader for so long. Capability and toughness are the hallmarks of the F-150 legacy.

(Copyright 2007 Ken Payne, All Rights Reserved. This article is used by Internet Brands, Inc. with permission - no license is given beyond this permission and may be revoked by Ken Payne.)