2025 Toyota Tundra Road Test and Review

2025 Toyota Tundra TRD Rally ・ Photo by Brady Holt

America’s least favorite full-size pickup still outsells its favorite full-size SUV. It outsells anything from a luxury brand. At 159,528 vehicles sold last year, it outsold all but 23 other vehicles in the entire U.S. market. 

We’re talking about the 2025 Toyota Tundra. It can’t match the sales of the rival Ford F-150, Ram 1500, or Chevrolet Silverado. Last year, it didn’t even sell at half the volume of the GMC Sierra – which is just a Silverado with some styling tweaks. 

But by any other standard, a lot of Americans are buying Tundras. To check in on this popular pickup, we just spent a week testing the 2025 Toyota Tundra’s new TRD Rally model. Keep reading as we walk through its pros and cons so you can see if it’s the right half-ton pickup truck for you. 

Lots of Features for the Money

The base 2025 Toyota Tundra SR costs $40,090, while the model line extends up to the $80,725 Capstone. 

All big pickups are expensive these days. But the Tundra tends to offer more features for the money than the competition. For example, the base SR has cloth upholstery instead of vinyl; a turbocharged V6 engine making a mighty 358 horsepower (as we’ll discuss, other trim levels have even more power); push-button starting; automatic climate control; and adaptive cruise control. 

Our tested TRD Rally is an off-road version of the next-up SR5. For $62,442 (including the mandatory $1,945 destination charge on all Tundras), we got heated leatherette-upholstered front seats, 389 horsepower, a nine-speaker stereo, a keyfob-operated tailgate, a 14-inch infotainment touchscreen, power-folding mirrors, and off-roading gear that includes four-wheel drive, a locking rear differential, Bilstein shocks, all-terrain tires, hill-descent control, and Toyota’s Crawl Control system. Or if you don’t need the off-road gear, you can get the TRD Rally's comfort and luxury amenities on the Limited for as little as $54,305. 

Depending on the particular feature you’re looking for, you might find that a rival truck has it for less money. But the Tundra tends to be a strong value overall for its class. 

2025 Toyota Tundra TRD Rally ・ Photo by Brady Holt

Lots of Straight Lines

Toyota last redesigned the Tundra in 2022. This truck has sharper, crisper lines than more rounded-off competitors – only the GMC Sierra is this angular. We especially like the carefully detailed rear end with vertical LED taillights; the back of a pickup truck can sometimes look like an afterthought. 

We’re not quite sold on the big black grille that you’ll find on most trim levels. We’d pick body-colored trim or even chrome. But if your Tundra is a dark color anyway, it won’t stand out as much as on our Ice Cap White test vehicle. The new TRD Rally model is dressed up with red, orange, and yellow striping that Toyota says recalls the company’s “Baja racing heritage.” 

2025 Toyota Tundra TRD Rally ・ Photo by Brady Holt

Simple Yet Modern Interior

The full-size pickup segment has a new war for interior opulence, with rivals scrambling to out-dazzle each other with expensive details. The 2025 Toyota Tundra, meanwhile, went with a different approach: simplicity. 

The Tundra has a cleanly styled dashboard with bold, blocky elements rather than a mix of little pieces. It looks sturdy and purposeful, with easy-to-use physical buttons and knobs to complement the central touchscreen. A modest 8-inch screen is standard, but a huge 14-inch unit is widely available. And while a Ram 1500 fills its own available big screen with lots of little details, the Tundra presents a few things in enormous fonts. You’ll never have to squint to tap the right icon or read any text, and big physical buttons handle common functions. That said, we wish we could split the screen to show multiple things at the same time (like radio information plus the GPS navigation map). And Toyota charges a subscription fee to use the nav system. Fortunately, through the wireless Android Auto and Apple CarPlay integration, you can use your phone’s mapping app through the screen. 

Top-of-the-line Tundras have the simple aesthetic and white leather dashboard of a Range Rover. Our test vehicle has some shiny black trim on the upper dash and ordinary hard plastic on most other surfaces. It’s not fancy, but the pieces fit together well enough that it’s not merely cheap. 

2025 Toyota Tundra TRD Rally ・ Photo by Brady Holt

Tons of Space for Five People

The Tundra is available with a choice of two body styles, which range from roomy to extremely so. The Double Cab is an extended-cab truck with four swing-out doors; you won’t stretch out in the back, but the cushion is high and supportive, and it’s wide enough for three adults. Like rival crew cabs, the jumbo Tundra CrewMax provides limo-like legroom.

Whichever you pick, there are two spacious front seats with a big (if awkwardly divided) center console bin between them. Unlike rival pickups, there’s no option for a bench seat, limiting all Tundras to five passengers. The rear seat can either fold down to create an in-cabin cargo hold or flip upward to expose hidden storage bins. 

Passengers can also enjoy some unusual features in the Tundra. The rear windshield can roll down for a more open-air experience. An optional panoramic sunroof lets in additional sunlight (at the expense of some rear headroom). Available built-in rear sunshades let you go the other way and keep the sun back out. Heating and ventilation are available for not only the front seats, but even the back. And new this year, upper trim levels include massaging front seats. 

Turbo Power Comes Standard

As we mentioned, every Tundra has a turbocharged V6. This 3.4-liter V6 makes 389 hp and 479 lb-ft of torque on most trim levels, while the base SR dips to a still-impressive 348 hp and 405 lb-ft. This engine is smooth, quiet, and effortlessly powerful. And it helps the truck tow an impressive 12,000-pound trailer. The Chevrolet Silverado and Ford F-150 can tow even more on certain versions, but keep in mind that no Tundra trim level except the base SR tows less than 10,340 pounds. Most trucks have a wider range between their strongest and weakest towing limits. 

The Tundra also hauls a payload of up to 1,940 pounds. For cargo, the Tundra Double Cab has a choice of 6.5-foot and 8.1-foot beds, while the CrewMax has a 5.5-foot bed on all trim levels with the option for a 6.5-footer on all but the top trim levels. Unlike the towing capacity, payload limits do drop fast as you choose more opulently equipped, heavier Tundras. Still, even the lowest-rated Capstone can carry 1,485 pounds. 

2025 Toyota Tundra TRD Rally ・ Photo by Brady Holt

The Hybrid Option

Toyota calls its V6 engine the i-Force. Upper Tundras also offer a powertrain called the i-Force Max. It’s a gas-electric hybrid with even more power – 437 hp and 583 lb-ft of torque – along with better gas mileage. 

The standard V6 Tundra i-Force gets EPA estimates of 18 mpg in the city, 23 mpg on the highway, and 20 mpg combined with rear-wheel drive and about 1 mpg less with four-wheel drive (varying slightly by trim level). We averaged only about 18 mpg during our weeklong test of a four-wheel-drive model. 

The hybrid i-Force Max improves the EPA ratings to 20 mpg city, 24 mpg highway, and 22 mpg combined with rear-wheel drive and 19 mpg city, 22 mpg highway, and 20 mpg combined with four-wheel drive. So the Tundra’s hybrid powertrain doesn’t sip fuel like a Toyota Prius. But for a 437-horsepower full-size pickup truck, 20 mpg isn’t so bad. Every Tundra can run on lower-cost regular-grade fuel. 

2022 Toyota Tundra i-Force Max hybrid ・ Photo by Brady Holt

Smooth Steering

Driving the Tundra, we appreciated the truck’s smooth, natural steering. The steering wheel glides easily as you spin it – it’s low effort without feeling sloppy and loose. 

The Tundra also boasts a rear suspension with coil springs instead of leaf springs. That’s a design choice intended to make the truck more comfortable at the expense of some capability. However, the Tundra still doesn’t ride more smoothly than rival Ford or Chevy trucks – or as comfortably as a Ram 1500. It jiggles on smooth roads and bounces over bumps. This is still a civilized, modern truck, but it won’t feel like a Toyota crossover. 

Toyota provides many safety and driver-assistance features as standard equipment, including adaptive cruise control, lane-keeping steering assistance, and forward automatic emergency braking. You can’t get hands-free driving like the American trucks, though. If all the safety gear fails to prevent an accident, the Tundra earns the highest designation of Top Safety Pick+ from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. No competitor matches that score. The Tundra also earned five out of five stars in National Highway Traffic Safety Administration crash testing. 

2025 Toyota Tundra TRD Rally ・ Photo by Brady Holt

Tundra vs. the Competition

The Tundra has lots of power and amenities for the money, all while keeping up with the class’s standards in other ways and getting the best crash-test scores. 

The Ford F-150 has a wider range of engines that also include a smaller and more economical V6, a traditional V8, and a fully electric powertrain, along with its own hybrid. Its nifty features include a center console that turns into a computer surface; the ability to use the truck as an electricity generator; and a knob that helps you painlessly reverse a trailer.

The Chevrolet Silverado (along with its GMC Sierra cousin) has a class-exclusive diesel engine and its own V8 option, plus an “invisible trailer” camera system that shows a view of the road past your trailer. Chevy and GMC also sell electric Silverado and Sierra pickups, though they share nothing but their names with the gas versions.

Like the Tundra, the Ram 1500 is now sold only with a six-cylinder turbo, and it rides the most smoothly. 

All three of these Tundra competitors have amenities like hands-free driving and multifunction tailgates, too. 

Note that a former competitor, the slow-selling Nissan Titan, ended production last year.

2025 Ram 1500 Warlock ・ Photo by Brady Holt

Capability at a Bargain Price

The 2025 Toyota Tundra didn’t blow us away at first. It matched the competition, yes, but we weren’t finding an incredible selling point. Then we crunched the numbers, and the Tundra’s value proposition became clearer. You can get a more capable or fancier Toyota for the price of a more basic rival. 

We wish Toyota used its big touchscreen better. We wished its coil springs helped it ride as well as the Ram. It doesn’t have as many clever touches or advanced technologies as rival trucks. And some people will wish for an old-school V8 option. But overall, the Tundra has few glaring faults and plenty of value for the money. 

2025 Toyota Tundra TRD Rally ・ Photo by Brady Holt