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"We're in it to win it": Toyota says top-secret new engine will change the ute game as it promises "it will blow you away"

Toyota to change the ute game?

Toyota is making some big promises about its incoming Tundra pick-up, with a combination of LandCruiser 300 Series' engine options and a new top-secret drivetrain set to "blow you away", and that could find its way into the HiLux and GR HiLux family.

That's the word from Toyota's American management, with the brand's North American Vice President of Sales, Bob Carter, telling US outlet MotorTrend the new engine "will blow you away", while promising his company was "in it to win it" when it came to the big truck power wars.

Just how it will blow us away is still shrouded in mystery. While US reports point to the new Tundra abandoning its V8 petrol for the Toyota Landcruiser 300 Series' twin-turbo V6 (delivering a whopping 225kW and 700Nm).

That engine, according to Carter, will be the Tundra's "core powertrain that's substantially more powerful in terms of horsepower and torque than the current V8", but it's not the surprise engine he's referring to.

Because that engine will include the new technology that will "blow you away", and there's nothing particularly cutting-edge about a twin-turbo V6.

Instead, the new engine will be an option, and will capitalise on Toyota's own technology.

"We have our concept and our own technology that I think you'll be impressed. We're in it to win it," Carter told MotorTrend.

Toyota being Toyota, that could be a hybrid, a plug-in hybrid, a hydrogen fuel cell, a diesel hybrid. But we do know the new engine will have a performance bent, and that means big things for the brand's expanding GR brand. Carter says the mystery will be offically solved in September, but if the LC300 is anything to go buy, we'll be reporting on leaks well ahead of that day.

What that could mean for the incoming GR HiLux remains to be seen. We've long thought Toyota will fit the LC300's V6 diesel to its go-fast ute, with our sources confirming the new engine would have multiple uses within the Toyota family. Combine that with the brand's GR executives confirming that they'd need a "big diesel" to power a go-fast HiLux, and the evidence really starts to stack up.

But with Toyota's American trucks taking a new-tech bent when it comes to performance, it seems everything is on the table.

Prepare, then, to be blown away.