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Everything about the 2023 Toyota Tundra seems specifically designed to be driven in Northern Minnesota, which made me doubly appreciative of a week-long test-drive in the new top-of-the-line Capstone Edition of the company’s biggest pickup.
What could be more appropriate?
The name itself, Tundra, connotes an image of either rewatching the classic movie Dr. Zhivago or of spending this particular winter in Duluth, where we started out setting the all-time record for snowfall in the month of December at 44.7 inches. The old record was 43.3 and we broke it with an inch on New Year’s Eve, just to cut it close.

If that’s not enough, the color of the test vehicle was “Wind Chill Pearl,” which also seemed appropriate, since the three-day, 30-inch snowfall that hit us on the North Shore included wind that gusted to 64 miles per hour, giving new definition to the term wind chill.
The Capstone is the last new thing needed to top off the all-new chassis, body, engine and rear suspension which was brought to the surface on the 2022 Tundra.
Naturally, being Toyota’s biggest vehicle, the Tundra has grown a bit but is still a little smaller than the competitors such as the F-150, Ram 1500 and Silverado, which have been embroiled in an annual battle to build the biggest and baddest pickup.
The Tundra, however, gets very competitive with its new twin-turbocharged V6 engine and its hybrid electric sup-plement, a battery-generator device that combines with the gas-engine output to increase its power from 389 to 487 horsepower and its torque from 479 to 583 foot-pounds compared to the basic non-hybrid model. That gives the test Tundra a payload of 1,940 pounds and a towing capacity of 12,000 pounds.

That seems more than adequate, and all of that technical stuff with the dual-overhead-camshaft engine, turbo and hybrid, plus the more comfortable ride on new rear suspension and the impressive luxury of the Capstone interior makes the sticker price of $76,760 seem reasonable when compared to the top-line competition.

Toyota never boasted that the Tundra would challenge the Ford, Ram or Chevy pickups, it just wanted a segment that it could carve out for itself and work within.
Interesting that Toyota’s dominance in smaller hybrids is aimed at higher fuel economy, competitors have used hybrid power to supplement the engine’s power.
With the Tundra, Toyota has proven it also can play that game.
The Tundra’s EPA estimates claim 19 city and 22 highway miles per gallon, but during our snowy week, the onboard computer showed mostly 12.7 to 16.7 mpg, and a “best” figure of 20.7 during our week of use.
Climbing aboard the Tundra you are immediately engulfed in leathery luxury with flashy black and white bucket seats, and a quick exam action of all the gadgets and switches tells you you’re going to need more than a quick once-over to figure out how everything works and can be controlled.
For example, there’s a switch for adjusting where the power is going, but it is confusing. You don’t know right off if you are always in four-wheel drive or if you have to switch into it.
Many trucks require you to engage 4WD with a switch, so you can switch it to 2WD for highway cruising when 4WD merely uses up more power. Usually you also can use the switch to engage 4x4, which locks both axles so that all four wheels turn simultaneously to churn out of deep snow or mud. Yet another option is to disengage traction control and stability control.

These things were not all readily evident on the second morning we had the Tundra at the exact moment we needed to know.
What had happened was the heavy slush formed on the first day of the blizzard had hardened into ruts before being buried by a foot of new snow, and while I was confident I could barrel through the snow on our long but straight driveway, recent St. Louis County repaving of our rural highway also left us with an abrupt rise of more than a foot to get out of our once-level driveway, and another branch of our impressive county folks had plowed the main road in a manner that left a large snowpile that had an extremely large pile at the south end.

As I started to hustle up the steep slope, only then did I see the extra-high pile to my left, and I stopped.
When I backed up for another run at the less-severe end of the pile, the Tundra slid off course just a bit and buried all four wheels axle-deep in snow-covered frozen slush. It was only then that I desperately tried every different setting, and none of them allowed me to extricate the vehicle from being stuck.

Fortunately, our neighbor, Eric, who has a giant SuperDuty turbo-diesel that could pull houses off their foundation happened to take a break from his neighborhood plowing expeditions and with amazing ease was able to hook a tow cable underneath the Tundra – which, surprisingly, had no front tow-hooks – and pulled us out onto the main road.

So it wasn’t until after the mini-crisis that I figured out that leaving the Tundra in its automatic setting placed it in the all-wheel-drive set-up that would shift traction to whichever wheel had some.

I would greatly prefer to see a simple switch with 4H, 4L, and 2H, and a separate one to regulate stability and traction control.
Otherwise, if Eric hadn’t been available, the beautiful Tundra with its Wind Chill Pearl paint job and another 6 inches of snow coming might not have been spotted in its impromptu off-road posture until April.
We decided later that finding and installing the best brand of winter tires for the Tundra would be required for those of us living in the Great White North. He said he had to do that with his Super Duty diesel, and the difference was significant.
As it was, everything worked well the rest of the week, after I kept my hands off the switch and left the Tundra to decide for itself what was the best setting for optimum traction.