Took this picture today from my front door.......it's the Endeavour, flying through Los Angeles today. It was an awesome site to see, especially with the jets following!!

 

Burbank area while I was filling up gas.

 

very cool...

 

Now that's some good publicity!

 

How can a truck, with a max towing capacity of 10,000lbs...tow 30x that? Even if it's only for 1/4 mile....WTF?! Impressive, but still...WTF?!

 

My guess is as long as the tongue weight is within its limits (a specialized device was developed per the article), any truck will pull until it cannot gain traction. stopping is another issue though If the shuttle rolls easily enough, I imagine the truck would pull it just fine. I would be curious to see it start though.

 

its already on the rig....

 

I just watched the teaser video at Toyota.com, what I do not understand is why does Toyota think that it needs to show everybody that it can tow?

On the website, they state "Yeah, it will tow your boat" and it shown with the space shuttle stuff. I just don't get it?

Why is Toyota wasting valuable marketing money on this gig?

 

Well then you just don't understand marketing and there's not much this forum can do to help that.

It's not a lot of money. It's a stock Tundra. Toyota is a big contributor to the museum already. It happened to all line up. To me that makes the biggest bang for the buck for potential publicity.

 

+1. Truck marketing is a total pissing match contest to see who has the bigger *****. If this was GM, Ford, or Dodge, you'd see the same thing.

It's a shame Endeavour was being housed in a hangar owned by an airline that has that hideous turd of a logo.

 

I understand what you are saying, and yes it is marketing, but the Tundra has been on the market for like 7 years, and if people do not get that it can tow by now then Toyota is doing a poor job with the model. And what is with towing a 1/4 mile, lame.

 

You think Toyota thinks that people don't know that a Tundra can tow?????

Obviously anyone with half a brain will know that a Tundra can tow.

There's obviously a rig better suited to do the actual towing of the space shuttle apparatus. There was a weight concern going over a particular bridge, that it couldn't handle the rig + the weight of the shuttle, and so they were looking to see if a lighter vehicle could tow the shuttle over that particular stretch.

Again, Toyota is very close with the museum and a Tundra was offered up as a potential solution for this problem. It happens to fit the bill. And with minimal additional effort, they can put some marketing spin on it as well. So I still feel you don't know marketing and/or the full-size truck market at all.

 

All I am saying, is that compared to the F150 or Dodge Ram who are promoting MPG, Ecoboost, Ram interior materials, and rear suspension, Toyota is still trying to convince people of the towing capabilities. It just feels really lame.

 

Again, this wasn't a main marketing message from its inception, they're just using a spin on this specific event that happened to fall into their lap. You can't use this event to tout MPG, etc.

 

I agree that towing isn't/shouldn't be the main focus of half-ton pickup marketing. Anybody looking for a truck with real towing as the main function is going to immediately bypass the Tundra/Titan/F150, etc and go straight for a 250/2500 or 350/3500 from the Big 3.