Auto news on Youtube Dec 28 2018

rev up your engines, today I'm gonna talk about why Toyota makes such reliable

cars, what's the reasoning behind that, and I'll start out by telling you the

truth nobody's sponsoring this, Toyota isn't

sponsoring this, I've been a mechanic for 51 years

look at my driveway, I've got a 1994 Celica, a 2007 Toyota Matrix, and a 2002

Lexus, and I bought all these vehicles used, now why did i buy toyota products

Lexus is a toyota product, let's not mash names there, well

precisely because I am a mechanic, Monday through Friday I spend all my time

fixing other people's cars, do you really think Saturday and Sunday I want to have

to fix my own cars, I want the most reliable cars so I don't have to work on

the things, even though I buy them used I hardly ever have to do anything to them

anyway, now why are the Toyota line reliable, well you have to understand

it's a different culture, I got a master's degree from the University of

Illinois and some of the stuff I studied was Asian business, being a Japanese

company Toyota was always thinking towards the future, they're thinking

sometimes even decades ahead, where American manufacturers hey, like most

American corporations, especially ones that are publicly traded, they're worried

about the stock price, so they're thinking about the quarterly reports

sometimes they're only thinking three months ahead, not three decades ahead

there's a real difference there between short term and long term profits too, take

Toyota in the 70s and 80s, people accused them of dumping their small pickup

trucks on the United States, they certainly didn't cost much back then, they do

today but they didn't used to, they built themselves up a market of people who

like their little trucks, wanted a dependable little truck, so they sold a

whole bunch of them, yeah they certainly didn't make that much money in the

beginning selling those trucks, but they sure as heck do now, they built up a

market by just improving their vehicles little bits at a time, I remember when I

was a young mechanic in the 60's everybody laughed at the Japanese stuff

and said, oh those little rice burners, those little puddle jumpers what

good are they, well sometimes being conservative pays off in a business

world, Toyota never really made a v8 pickup truck

until the tundra, they were originally gonna call it the t-150 but ford

threatened to sue them so they dropped off on that and decided to call it the

tundra, they were worried that they weren't gonna be able to sell them

in large enough volume, they started making them in Indiana where they used to make

their forklift trucks, so they came in very conservative, they ended up selling

all the ones they made, and they just started making more and more as people

saw, Wow a reliable Japanese large pickup truck with a v8 engine, that's not their

main market you know they're not gonna be beating Ford and selling v8 pickup

trucks like the f-150, that's a real American thing and they've been building

those f-150s for decades to perfecting them as time goes on, but the tundra

shows one basic thing about Toyota, they were conservative they started with, okay

we'll try v8 trucks now and a small amount, then as they got popular they

started making more and selling more, even though big trucks weren't really in their

market, their more into cars to get people around in, that's where they were making

most of their profit, look at the camrys and Corollas they sold millions and millions

of those things, and really when you look at them they weren't particularly

good-looking, and they didn't ride all that well in the beginning, but they just

didn't break down, and a lot of it has to do with their entire manufacturing setup

in Japan they don't have the big labor versus management fight like in the

United States where they're going at it tooth and nail, in Japan a good factory

job was seen as a lifetime thing, the people would go on summer vacations

together and they would all be treated fine, and there wasn't this, oh we're the

workers and the management is screwing us over, it's a completely

different scenario than it is in the United States, and let's face it if you

have a happy labor force and you keep incrementally making your vehicles

better and better and perfecting them and then

trying new things every once in a while but doing it conservatively, your

vehicles are probably going to come off the line put together better than they

are in a different scenario, where the management and the workers are at each

other all the time, hey I've even had private conversations

with businessmen in the United States working for large corporations, and they

said Scotty we can't compete with the Japanese on the same level, because they

just have a different Society, they'd say the pressure for short-term profit was

really high in the United States, and there are always trying to maximize that

whether it be lowering the quality of parts in cars to save money, or paying

the guys who built them less money, and if you think about it both of those are

not such a hot idea, you don't want lower quality parts and you

don't want people who are building getting paid less and less as time goes on, so if

your main focus is not, how can we make more profit by either cutting the

quality of our products, paying the workers less, you're gonna make better

quality vehicles that's just common sense, now me I admit it I'm a

cheapskate, all these Toyota's and Lexus's I bought, I bought them used but since

the Toyotas are so well made, you can buy one it's got some mileage on it and

still drive it for years, I mean I've had my own customers sometimes arguing with

me in saying, oh I'm happy with my Chrysler I haven't had any problems with it and

then I say, well how many miles do you have on it and they'll say well we've got

30,000 miles on it, and I just laugh and say, hey

call me up when you got a hundred thousand or if it makes it to 150,000 and

you spend a ton of money fixing it, and over the

last three decades, really I haven't personally found anything that's more

reliable for the money then the Toyota products are, and I just hope that they

don't start following the Americans, but sadly I see a little bit of that in the

newer Toyotas, I see things breaking long before they used too, I've seen power door

locks break on cars there were only two three years old, I see water pumps go

bad on vehicles that had maybe 40,000 miles on them, but let's hope that that's just

a fluke and they don't follow down the line of planned obsolescence and start

making cars that break down before their time, so if you never want to miss

another one of my new car repair videos, remember to ring that Bell!

For more infomation >> Why Toyota Makes the Most Reliable Cars, Japanese vs American Culture - Duration: 7:00.

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2019 Ford Ranger vs. 2019 Toyota Tacoma: Real-World Test — Pickuptrucks.com - Duration: 12:48.

it's not easy to make a big splash in the pickup truck world but that's

exactly what Ford wants to do by bringing back the 2019 Ford Ranger so we

thought it would be a good idea to put it up against the top seller in the

mid-size segment so we've got Tacoma against the Ranger

I'm here with West Coast editor for cars comm Brian Wong Brian I want to give you

some numbers and then I want your impressions of these vehicles we've got

it sounds good the Tacoma the 3.5 liter v6 278 horsepower 265 foot-pounds of

torque the new Ranger only comes in a four-cylinder 2.3 liter EcoBoost as a

pretty good sized turbocharger but it's 270 horsepower 310 foot-pounds of torque

how did they drive on road yeah I think that the difference in torque really

sticks out in favor of the Ranger one of our long-term complaints about the

Tacoma has really been the peak eNOS of that engine but I thought the Ranger had

a lot more even power delivery on-road off-road and it just made it more fun to

drive overall okay so when we did Canyon carving we went up and over a few

mountain ranges which one was more fun to drive oh the port for sure and that

because you didn't really have to put your foot in it to get to go there's a

pretty willing participant from even mid throttle very quick throttle response 10

speed transmission probably there's a lot of good too it's got a sport mode

but it has a very very touchy almost throttle so when you want to go all you

do is put your foot into it you're gone yeah this Ford 10 speed automatic

transmission has started to make its way into more and more Ford products as well

as GM products and I would say that it's done pretty well and pretty much all

applications and today it did everything that we could throw at it with you know

great vigor but I know there's a lot of Toyota guys out there screaming at us

what about the transmission button yet you have to push to change the algorithm

and formatting of the software in the transmission that helps a lot and then

it's got a sport mode you can flip over and instead of the thumb drive

transmission you have on the Ford you've actually got a shifter yeah the shifter

to move through the gears on the Toyota is a much more

it's a preferred way to kind of do that it feels more mechanical you feel more

in tune with the truck rather than just kind of using

thumbless to to flip through gears but at the end of the day I'm still taking

the Ranger I'm still taking that advantage into work and I'm still taking

that very consistent water delivery whether you're in a sport mode or not so

when you're distant drive the Ranger is far better and when you're in sport I

still think it edges it so more fun to drive but how did it do during our fuel

economy testing it's interesting because you would automatically kind of give the

big advantage to the smaller engine but in this case they actually came out

basically in a dead heat after our 270 or so mile drive that we did the other

day on roads so you're not quite getting the advantage of fuel economy that you

think from a 4-cylinder but again I think the performance kind of makes up

for it so more fun to drive gets fairly good yeah

enemy but the v6 and the 4-cylinder do pretty much the same thickness yeah and

that's kind of what Toyota was going for with his v6 right it kind of switches

cycles on you so it starts on the atkinson cycle which is more efficient

and i think that that's really how able to keep up with this truck in terms of

fuel economy as you might expect a lot of differentiation here in the interiors

this is the ranger lariat model so we've got nicely contoured front seats leather

wrapped also soft touches both in the center console on the door so your

elbows don't get roughed up and also here on the dash itself this is a softer

material it's not the hard plastic that we see on the XL or the XLT

much more organic layout more horizontal nice big 8 inch color screen here for

the navigation and a lot of cubby spaces in the doors also in the front and

cupholders here in the center here in the backseat the Ranger also

differentiates itself with Tacoma in a few key ways the first is more charging

options the back that become was very Spartan no air vents to the backseat

passengers no even charging options but here in the back of the Ford you get two

USB ports and a 110 volt three prong household outlet now that joins two USB

ports up front and two more 12-volt up front so that you keep all your devices

charging the Ranger and that's something that modern people really need

especially those with kids so if you're gonna use this also as a family vehicle

that's a really important consideration also on the Ranger back seat folds up

and folds down no storage behind the seat here but underneath to decently

sized cubbies for you to fit two and other things that you really want to

keep in the truck now those charging ports are another way in which the

Ranger interior really kind of leaps ahead of a Tacoma that stink multimedia

system has Android auto ball car plate in just a cleaner overall user

experience Toyota really needs updates multimedia system and the Tacoma is no

exception so we started out with the interior the Ranger which is the one

that I would say that we clearly liked better Toyota

no slouch in that department we actually like the styling of this a lot the dials

and the whole dashboard here looks more rugged mark talking about the horizontal

integration of the Rangers dashboard so they're definitely more vertical all of

your controls be kind of stacked up here in the center console there's not a

whole lot going on on the right side of the cabin at all really just focuses

down to the center now as we mentioned screens definitely better than the Ford

it has those my Ford touch screens in the instrument panel it also has a

larger touchscreen the center console so you had a smaller touchscreen but it's

also missing connectivity options no lanes right Auto no apple carplay in the

Toyota infotainment system is one that we've been asked them to update for

years so when I do get updated in there are other vehicles hopefully those

changes do come to the next generation of Tacoma one thing to mention that it

does do well it has a large wireless charging pad so if you have a smart

phone with wireless charging it's actually big enough to fit even the

larger smartphones of today with the case on so my phone fits in there fine

not always the case in different vehicles one other thing that we do like

about the Toyota interior this shift knob here the shift action when you're

doing up and down and locking out gears much better than the thumb shifter

that's on the Ranger mark how about the backseat yeah the key word back here is

Spartan very limited in legroom Headroom a little bit more cramped than the

Ranger also no AC vents no charging ports here and back what they do offer

is a little bit of storage under the seat bottom seat slips forward and if

you fold forward the seat backs there's also some hidden storage back there as

well here at the back of the trucks not a lot of creativity not a lot of

complexity but there are differences what what are you seeing between these

two the most obvious difference is that we have a composite bedliner in the back

that the coma it was spray in bedliner in the back of the the Ranger and this

composite bed later probably helps the Tacoma on overall on weight but it does

you know have kind of a slippery floor that you don't really get with the

Ranger there is one thing about the tacomas bed that is heavier and that

would be the tailgate so back here steel on the Ford it is aluminum and

much easier to lift up you can even do it with two or three fingers now the

Toyota tailgate is strutted so it actually softly releases so thick that

it does yeah but the Ranger does not have that option but it is very light so

it's very easy to close all right we also took these to the scale the truck

scales and found out some very interesting details about payload yeah

so you have a very big advantage in payload overall payload for the Ranger

so that checks in at about 1500 pounds of payload as we wait at the scale it's

a combo you're down around a thousand pounds and that's a 50% difference in

payload between the two vehicles and very interesting we found out that they

both of these vehicles are both crew cabs both four-wheel drive both 5 foot

beds weigh about the same thing with 20 pounds of each other yeah really close

in weight but since the gbw number is so much higher on the Ford they get 4 500

pounds more payload capacity yeah maximum payload capacity which is super

cab 2-wheel drive version is over 1,800 pounds so way higher than anything

Toyota and for that matter anything Colorado Canyon or frontier can offer

right and that will kind of be a big selling a big selling or detracting

point for one of these trucks for consumers who are gonna be hauling a lot

of stuff so if you're gonna have to carry anything that's over a thousand

pounds that immediately disqualifies it Acoma for you and leaves you with the

Ranger the last thing I want to make sure we talk about at the back of the

trucks here their rear axles very interesting strategy Tacoma still has

drum brakes they both use monotube shocks and a four leaf pack suspension

in the Tacoma but basically a one leaf package in the Ranger that still has

more payload than anything else yeah it's impressive for what they're able to

do we did get a chance to go play with these vehicles off-road but we should

note this is the top level Ranger it has the FX 4 package four-wheel drive but

Toyota we have the TRD sport there's still a TRD off-road and a TRD pro level

above that so a fairly level comparison but not identical Brian talked to me

about how much fun we had first of all and then what what technology in each of

the vehicles kind of allow that to have yeah

I think it's safe to say that both of us weren't impressed by what each truck was

able to accomplish on the Toyota side it's the TRD sport so it doesn't have

plated as crawl control system which we've enjoyed in the past but even on a

street tire it was able to kind of handle everything that we threw at it

from a Hill Climb to going through ruts to even a rock crawling section the

suspension flex and the coma and the amount of you know ease with which it's

able to kind of traverse obstacles very impressive for not their top level

off-road truck now on the fort side comes with trail control they're kind of

virginal crawl control and much too the way that Ford has kind of endorsed it

it's quiet you go crawl controls kind of loud you can hear all the mechanical

linkages kind of working on the Ford you just slap it in there take your foot off

the gas take your foot off the brake and it crawls out with nary a sound so it's

a much quieter that feels like a much smoother system except for in one

instance and that would be rock crawling so for some reason the trail control

system on the Ford kind of when you get over a rock or when you get over a lip

it gives you like a little bit of rock back and it's very disconcerting when

you're on a trail and you're trying to get over something and be smooth to have

the system feel like it's gonna rock back on you at a certain point I kind of

just took control and I was like you know the truck the trill bitch was doing

real well I think I can do a little bit better and I don't know if I've ever had

that feeling with crawl control ya know we both have had a lot of experience

with Toyota's crawl control and we've although we've always am constantly are

commenting about how noisy it is when you know those brakes are going on and

off the trail control much smoother much quieter more organic almost as it climbs

over those obstacles but yeah you're exactly right in those situations where

we were going up the steep grades and that throttle wasn't quite enough to

keep that vehicle locked down it almost was if it was prevented from

using the brakes to keep it from rolling backwards it got a little rolling

backwards in some cases maybe even a foot or maybe more than a foot before

the throttle kicked in and actually brought that back up to speed and you

held your ground and then eventually the traction found its way forward and maybe

we've been overly I guess critical we might be of the word about crawl control

and it's noises because I think that there is some comfort in hearing the

traction control and hearing the brakes working concert so well with the

powertrain on the Toyota the Ford we got there we're like oh we

don't want sound well maybe that's not the best you know the grass isn't always

greener on the other side recommendations that we obviously have

for anybody thinking about these vehicles first thing you want to think

about is putting a good off-road maybe all-terrain yeah or if you're gonna do

any off-roading but secondly maybe wait for the Ford Ranger Raptor we keep

hearing rumors about that coming down the road that can't be very difficult to

make no I think that's coming and I think that if you're gonna do some real

serious off-roading in the Ranger that might be the one to wait for but I will

say this the fx4 was really impressive on dirt so kind of how the Raptor has

made its name as a dirt runner the fx4 does a very good impression we took it

over some washes at 3040 miles an hour suspension felt very stable that

powertrain really responsive easy to manipulate the throttle through corners

so you can kind of get the tail to swing out a little bit as we did a few times

great fun in the wash yeah Ford engineers have dialed in the suspension

both on pavement and for all sorts of off-road use which we experienced today

yeah I think that the Ranger just it drives really well and I think that

that's something you could say about it both on Road which we experienced

yesterday and off-road with the experience today and that's a really big

compliment to pay for a truck especially something in this segment where there

are other trucks that don't necessarily drive as well in one condition or the

other so there you have just some of our thoughts about some very specific

categories about how these two trucks compare with one another but we have no

doubt if this new Ranger is going to do this well against the top seller

consumers are very likely to respond well to for more details and to find out

who won our competition go to pickup trucks calm

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