Chuck Norris – for those who dare to pretend they don’t know who he is – is a former U.S. Air Force serviceman, martial arts expert and star of such screen masterpieces as The Delta Force and Walker, Texas Ranger. He is also known as the most fearsome and toughest badass the world has ever seen if the prolific Internet meme featuring Chuck Norris is to be believed.

When the Boogeyman goes to bed, he checks his closet for Chuck Norris.

The Toyota Tundra is the Chuck Norris of the truck world. It’s like Truck Norris.

Cornball? Sure. A bold claim? Perhaps, but consider the now 70-year old Mr. Norris (the human one, not the truck one) does not cast quite the imposing shadow of, say, The Rock or even Tom Hardy, but he has proven to be one tough dude over decades of films. Likewise, Toyota’s Tundra looks and feels pretty old compared to a new F-150, Ram or Silverado. Toyota doesn’t offer a giant 1-ton dually format powered by a locomotive’s diesel engine for the Tundra either. Instead, its 5.7L i-FORCE V8 starts up with a gruff roar not found in the turbocharged competitors’ mills displacing two-thirds the size of the Toyota’s engine.

Truck Norris’s torque pulls out a whole forest by the roots, not just a stump.

The Tundra has been around. It’s seen some stuff. Bad stuff. Hard stuff. And it’s survived it all. That’s what’s so appealing about this thing – it always reminds the driver that it’s a real truck. It’s big, it’s not particularly quiet (especially the road noise from the all-terrain Michelins) and it doesn’t try to coddle its occupants needlessly, especially in this SR5 trim.

This here is Truck Norris, and it’s not here to mind its manners. It’s is here to work and it’s going to keep on working until the job is done. And the next job. And the ones after that for decades to come as long as you give it basic maintenance, and fuel it up regularly. And regularly you will. We saw an average of 15.3 L/100 km during a week of mixed city and highway driving (the government figures on 16.3 L/100 km combined for this rig).

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Fuel efficiency figures a little higher than the turbo V6 competitors doesn’t scare Truck Norris – that’s the price that comes with a proper V8 bellow and an impressively smooth engine. 381 hp and 401 lb-ft of torque may not be the top of the class, but mated to its six-speed automatic (no silly 8, 9 or 10-speeds are needed here) it all just works and never feels wanting for power. Car and Driver got their Tundra to 96 km/h from a standstill in 6.4 seconds, which is not too shabby for a utility vehicle that can also kick up some dirt.

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