Funny seeing this thread bumped up, I just got back from my visit at Toyota Headquarters over in Torrance, CA. I was out in cali last week and have some friends in the industry so they were able to get me inside for a tour of the place, it's friggin' HUGE!
Anyway, inside their testing faculties I saw then working on a bunch of these TRD pro models (mostly tundras and a few tacos though
), BUT there was this one 4runner pro model sitting off to the side so naturally I asked about it. The engineer looked at me with a grin and told me to go take it for a spin on the test track, and well of course I gladly obliged!
So keeping in mind this is just a standard run of the mill test track meant for cars, and obviously I didn't plan to throw it around corners at high speeds and roll it over a few times, lol; so this drive was going to be pretty uneventful to say the least, or so I thought. I took it easy at first and just lightly tossed it around the turns...the new suspension does seem to feel pretty good all around and well planted and the exhaust also seemed to have a nice rumble to it, but I kept hearing what sounded like an over tightened timing belt whining as I got on and off the gas.
Finally, I made my way around the track and entered the long straight section back to the garage and figured while the heck not, so I braced myself for the eminent rush of a 16 second 1/4 mi drag strip monster and punched it :lmao:. This is when I stopped laughing...because the transmission downshifted and threw me back into my seat and in what amounts to practically a blink of an eye, I reached close to triple digit speeds!
At this point it finally hit me, that whining I heard before was the roots-type blower under the hood, you could hear it loud and clear as it roared towards redline! I don't know why it didn't occur to me earlier because I've driven plenty of supercharged cars and know that distinctive sound from a mile away.
So back in the facilities I of course asked questions at the rate of a million miles and hour
. Long story short is, I can't share any details due to a confidentiality agreement, but I can say that there's going to be a factory supercharged option on the way this fall (not sure about add-on kits) :rockon:
Oh yeah, you can also check out this album of pictures I took while I was there and what it looks like under the hood of a real truck:
TMS Headquarters Visit--March 28, 2014
hoto::clap2:
