Today I was driving to work behind a Toyota Tundra. One thing that cannot be overstated is the sheer enormity of a Toyota Tundra. This mammoth pickup truck is the biggest thing to come out of Japan since Godzilla.
I seethed quietly at the Tundra because it had sort of cut me off on Route 2, and now I was trapped behind its gigantic rear end, which prevented me from seeing anything beyond it. The driver was one of those people who accelerates until they are riding the bumper of the car in front of them and then brakes, then accelerates again, then brakes again. Meanwhile, I am driving blind, trying to determine whether the Tundra driver is merely tempering his own enthusiasm or whether traffic is actually stopping and I am moments away from plowing into the Tundra’s expansive back fender, an event that would completely ruin my week.
Eventually, the Tundra took a left turn, and I found myself immediately behind a Toyota Sequoia, which is every bit as immense. I barely had time to register my relief before realizing that I had simply traded one obstructive mass for another.
As I drove, I started turning the names over in my head. Tundra. Sequoia. Tundra. Sequoia.
A tundra is a landscape defined by the absence of trees. A sequoia is a tree, and not just any tree, but one of the largest living things on Earth. It struck me that Toyota has decided that people who prefer to drive enormous vehicles are drawn to landscapes, whether forested or barren. Trees or no trees, the scale is the point.
I find this naming strategy oddly pleasing. After all, what exactly is a Camry? Or a Yaris? Is there any car more sexless than a Corolla? Even a minivan implies reproduction. Station wagons at least suggest some history.
The Tundra and the Sequoia, by contrast, make no such pretenses. They are not named for people or ideas or feelings. They are named for places so vast they dwarf human presence entirely, which feels appropriate for vehicles that make everything else on the road disappear.
Driving behind them, you lose the road, the horizon, and any illusion that you are an equal participant in traffic. You are not sharing the road so much as orbiting something much larger than yourself.
This, apparently, is what passes for rugged independence.
