Toyota is a little confused as to how its new full-size Tundra pickup only achieved a score of four stars in the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's test for frontal crash performance. Mike Levine at Pickuptruck.com, who is fast becoming Autoblog's unofficial expert on all things with a bed, spoke with Bill Kwong, a representative from Toyota, this morning. Kwong revealed that Toyota performed its own internal crash testing of the Tundra according to the NHTSA's criteria and the truck repeatedly scored five stars. This no doubt gave Toyota the confidence to predict that the Tundra would receive five stars across the board from the NHTSA, a move that definitely has the Japanese juggernaut wiping a little egg off its face now. Kwong said it will take a few weeks to sort out what contributed to the truck's four-star score, but that they'll determine what it is and fix it as soon as possible.

What's more curious about this whole situation is that the NHTSA reported frontal crash test scores for both the Tundra regular cab and the Double Cab, or what the NHTSA calls the Extended Cab in its results. Toyota claims, however, that the NHTSA hasn't tested the Double Cab yet and therefore its four-star result should be immediately removed from the organization's results website, safecar.gov. While we can't verify if Toyota's claim is true, both the pictures and video released by the NHTSA of the crash tests only show the regular cab model. Based on that, it does appear that the Double Cab, as well as the four-door Crew Max, have yet to be tested. Still, the four-star score for the Double Cab model remains on safecar.gov.



Check out the video of the Tundra regular cab being crash tested after the jump.

[Source: Pickuptruck.com]