Toyota used its Tundra CrewMax pickup truck to tow 292,500lb space shuttle in California to show off its incredible raw strength

Automakers are always busy proving their vehicles can do everything, and a while back Toyota pulled off an incredible stunt with a factory-stock Tundra CrewMax in California.

The Japanese automaker wanted to prove the Tundra CrewMax’s capability as a pickup truck.

To prove the point, the Tundra towed the actual Space Shuttle and its rig, too.

The only minor blip is that this record has since been broken so many times.

Automakers will never stop doing this

Manufacturers love proving their vehicles are good at doing the things they claim their vehicles are good at.

They are, so to speak, putting their money where their marketing campaigns are.

Their challenges range from practical and relevant to downright showoff-ish.

For example, practically every automaker likes to set records around the Nürburgring in Germany, including brands that aren’t known for creating performance cars and shouldn’t necessarily care about performance credentials and lap times.

But marketing is marketing, and all manufacturers have a point to prove.

For companies that make pickup trucks – and Toyota is certainly one of those companies – demonstrating their vehicles’ ability when it comes to towing things is essential.

Most people buy trucks because they like them – not because they need them – but ideally, you’d still want to know your vehicle could do the thing it’s good at doing if you needed it to.

This leads us to the crazy towing record that Toyota set a while back in California.

This Toyota Tundra CrewMax towed around 52 times its body weight

This Tundra CrewMax was able to tow 52 times its body weight.

The Tundra used by Toyota weighs just over 5,600 lbs – equivalent to 2,500+ kilograms – and it towed both the Space Shuttle Endeavour (150,000 lbs) and its rig (142,500) for a grand total of 292,500 lbs or 132,000+ kilograms.

That’s roughly the same as an average-sized person towing a large SUV or a pickup truck – like the Toyota Tundra, for example.

The interesting part is that the Toyota Tundra CrewMax, as standard, has a factory towing capacity of up 10,000 pounds.

Clearly, it could do a lot better than that.

One more thing worth pointing out is that the Tundra CrewMax that Toyota used was completely standard.

It was a factory-stock CrewMax with a 381-horsepower 5.7-liter V8 engine bought right off a Southern California dealer lot.

The truck ended up towing the Space Shuttle and its rig for about five minutes, and when it stopped, it wasn’t because it could no longer take it but simply because the truck had run out of runway.

The Tundra CrewMax was later donated to the California Science Center.

The only bit of bad news for the Japanese manufacturer and the Tundra is that this record was set in 2012 and has since been beaten a few times.

Just a few weeks ago, Porsche used the Cayenne Electric to tow the Stratolaunch Roc – the largest plane in the world in terms of wingspan – which weighs a staggering 500,000 lbs – or 227 tonnes.