Toyota Sequoia

Toyota Sequoia Toyota Sequoia
First Drive Review

At a glance, the name makes as much sense as some of the ones created by computers -- Vitara, for example -- although it does have the virtue of being a genuine word you can look up in the dictionary. But a truck named for a tree?

Well, the sequoia is a tree, yes, but it's a really big tree. Whether you're talking Sequoia sempervirens or Sequoiadendron giganteum, these are just about the biggest living things on the planet. And as you can see, this new Toyota is big, too. True, it's not the biggest of the sport-utilities. But it's Toyota's biggest ever, and it's bigger than most, with dimensions that fall between those of the General Motors clones -- the Chevy Tahoe and the GMC Yukon -- and the Ford Expedition. And like its namesake, this Sequoia will live only in North America.

Let's get down and digital. At 203.9 inches, the Sequoia is 5.0 inches longer than a Tahoe and 0.7 inch shorter than an Expedition, with a wheelbase that's 2.1 inches longer than the Chevy's and an inch shorter than the Ford's. It's a little narrower than its Yankee adversaries, and not as tall. Comparing four-wheel-drive versions, the Tahoe is 2.3 inches taller, the Expedition, 2.6. This is surprising in view of the Sequoia's decided edge in minimum ground clearance, the critical element for lumpy terrain. Checking four-wheel-drive editions, there are only 7.5 inches between mother earth and the low-hanging portions of the Expedition, 8.4 inches for the Tahoe, and 10.6 inches for the Sequoia.

Curb weights also put the Sequoia between the Ford and Chevy offerings. Toyota lists the base two-wheel-drive SR5 Sequoia at 5100 pounds, heavier than either of the domestics, but at 5300 pounds, the four-wheel-driver weighs almost 100 pounds less than the Expedition.

Somewhere in here you're gonna say, "Hey, what about the Land Cruiser? That's pretty big, right? What's the deal?"

The Cruiser certainly qualifies as big iron and weighs about 150 pounds less than the four-wheel-drive Sequoia. However, it's not as big. Its wheelbase is 5.9 inches shorter, it's almost a foot shorter overall, it's considerably smaller inside, and it costs a whole bunch more. Although Toyota wasn't ready to divulge final pricing, we're guessing the Sequoia will start at about $32,000 for a base two-wheel-drive SR5 model and at $36,000 for the luxed-up Limited. The Land Cruiser starts north of $51,000 and sells in limited volumes: 18,602 in 1999. Meanwhile, Toyota strategists have been hungrily monitoring a full-size-SUV market of about 600,000 per annum. Which is why there's a new plant in Indiana capable of building about 60,000 Sequoias per year.