You’ve all seen it. That gigantic black air dam jutting from the front fascia of the all-new 2024 Toyota Tacoma. The thing has to be at least six inches tall, and it totally ruins the look of an otherwise significantly improved frontal design.
I spoke with the new Toyota Tacoma’s chief engineer, Sheldon Brown, and asked about why this was needed. He openly admitted that he is “not a fan,” but that it was necessary for a number of reasons, one having to do with Toyota making improving the old truck’s oft-maligned seating position a “top priority.” Here, allow me (and him) to explain. I have the full interview in this video below:
I’ll be the first to admit that, when the 2024 Toyota Tacoma debuted, I couldn’t get past this debut photo taken by our Mercedes Streeter without adding an editor’s note:
I’m not the only one who thought this, as commenter Spectre6000 wrote:
I’m 100% with DT on the chin dam. Holy afterthought, Batman! It’s like someone grabbed a sheet of plastic out of a bin and stapled it on for testing, then never gave it another thought!
Here’s another comment from MH7:
I must be one of the few people who liked the design of the current Tacoma-a big appeal was that it didn’t have an ankle scraping air dam or needlessly complicated design, it just looked like a simple effective truck.
And here are perhaps the harshest two comments:
Yikes — “hideous” and “cow catcher”!
You may think that the Toyota Tacoma’s Chief Engineer, Sheldon Brown, would defend the air dam on his product, but actually, while he did back up the decisions that went into including it on the truck, he readily admitted: “I’m not a fan.”
Still, the air dam is there for a good reason, including Toyota’s focus on improving the outgoing truck’s awkward seating position — a problem described in the GoldSteading Overland YouTube video above.
“We wanted to address some of the foibles of the outgoing truck, one of those was the seating position — we wanted to raise the heel-to-hip, but we also wanted to make sure we had good head clearance. So we’ve actually grown the cabin slightly… also treadwidth extension… while door-to-door [distance] stays the same…with the overfenders the vehicle has gotten a bit wider. As a result of that, our effective area has become greater.”
What does that mean, practically? Well, the larger cabin that improves passenger comfort also comes with an increase in something called “Vehicle Demand Energy,” or “road load” as Brown calls it. This is effectively the power needed to propel the vehicle down the road, and can be quantified in terms of something called “coast down coefficients.” I won’t get into that right now, because the important thing is this: A bigger frontal area means more drag, as the drag force equation points out:
Notice how drag increases linearly with frontal area and drag coefficient. So if you increase your frontal area by X percent by increasing the cab size, and everything else stays the same, then you can expect your drag to go up by X percent. This, obviously, is not what Toyota wants — it wants to have its cake (a bigger cabin that allows for a more comfortable seating position) and eat it, too (i.e. not have to sacrifice road load and the associated fuel economy/emissions). Doing that means reducing the overall drag coefficient to compensate for the larger frontal area, and that means adding that hideous air dam.
“[Aero drag] is a contributor to road load… you can’t discount road load, and that road load really goes up when we’re talking about high-speed steady state… we wanted to really keep our aggressive styling… we wanted to keep the big shoulders on the truck. We really thought that was going to be important for stabilizing the truck to have that wide stance, so we had to look at different areas to improve aero,” Brown told me, saying the air dam really smooths the flow of air under the vehicle – an area that is typically extremely unaerodynamic.
The idea is: If you can push air to flow either around or under rather high-drag bits of the truck’s underbody (like that huge rear axle), then you can reduce the vehicle’s overall drag coefficient — in this case by “20 counts,” or 0.02 points of drag — a humongous figure in the world of aerodynamics.
Brown then got into the design of the air dam, noting the large holes on each side — one for a tie-down and one a recovery point for off-road snatch-jobs. He noted the holes are wide to allow for towing jobs at an angle that might pull a rope off to the side.
Why Not Use A Deployable/Retractable Air Dam?
In commenter Jake Harsh’s comment that I showed above, he wrote: “Please tell me that you can push a button to suck it up and out of harm’s way,” referring to what’s known in the industry as a deployable air dam or “active air dam” or “retractable air dam.” Such a device acts like air suspension in that it gives the best of all worlds: It provides good aerodynamics on the highway, but good ground clearance when going off-road.
“Now the question becomes ‘We could have done a retractable air dam,’ that’s the other way that we could have done this,” Brown told me. “We have to be careful with that one because you can see how large this [air dam] is — we gotta tuck that up somewhere. We gotta make sure that gets up and out of the way.”
As you can see in the image below, that air dam cannot fold backwards, as the short overhang means it would run into the tire. It could retract straight up like the F-150 air dam in the video above, but remember, this thing is the full width of the truck — that would require a lot of packaging space, which is needed for the cooling module, among other important bits.
“Front overhang is critically important, especially in the compact series — we really focus on approach angle… The other issue is, once we do tuck it up, we gotta tuck it way up [because]… people do take it off-road, and if you ever…damage that part, it is an emissions compliance part, you’d want to make sure that gets repaired, and candidly you wouldn’t like the replacement cost.”
In other words, an active air dam is a part of the truck’s emissions package, so if it fails, unfortunately, you may have to replace it, and it won’t be cheap.
“So we thought a better way to do that was to put this particular air dam on. I mean, I’m certainly not a fan. But there are the realities… and the tradeoffs that we are often forced to do.”
How To Take The Air Dam Off In Just A Few Minutes
The good news is that the air dam — which does not come on the off-road Tacoma trims — does come off via nine hex bolts with Phillips heads at their center, and per Brown, it doesn’t take long. “By the time it takes you to air down your tires, you’ve removed [this part],” he told me. Here’s a look at one of those nine bolts:
Kind of a bummer that you need a socket or screwdriver to get the air dam off, right? Why not make that air dam easily removable like the one on the 2008-2010 Jeep Grand Cherokee? Check it out:
Well, I asked that very question.
“Why did we not do the hand twist? A couple of different reasons… There are a couple of areas where we are a little bit tight… you gotta be able to get the whole hand up in there… so there was a hand space concern,” Brown told me. “The prevailing issue is: We’re pretty adamant that these things have to take a pretty good licking.”
“We wanna make sure they stay on the truck, so we use mechanical fasteners through a metal J-clip that is typically fastened to something rigid and solid. That makes sure these things don’t tear off — if you hit a snow bank… they’re higher than any curb stones so you shouldn’t [hit] any curbstones, but we expect them to take quite a beating and… stay on,” he said before kicking the air dam multiple times to prove his point.
“So when we started looking at some of the stuff that was easy to do and twist… we just didn’t get the retention value that we got out of the good ol’ fashioned mechanical fastener.”
And thus, you now know what went into Toyota’s decision to add that hideous air dam to the new Tacoma, why it has huge holes in it (to allow for sideways recovery), why there’s no retractable function (packaging space in the front overhang, cost, potential damage), and why Toyota decided to use regular ol’ bolts.
Was the air dam literally a direct result of trying to fix the outgoing truck’s awkward seating position? No, but it was a part of a chain reaction that resulted from that choice — part of an overall aerodynamic package that all works together to attempt to minimize drag (some of which was a result of a larger frontal area) while maintaining a rugged overall look.
You can read the full review of the 2024 Toyota Tacoma here.
Someone should start selling yellow air dam trim to move that market laterally from Dodge.
Where’s my chrome air dam wrap when I need it?
…. I mean…. that seems like a stretch. Saying “we wanted to improve our MPG for cafe requirements” is an easier pill to swallow.
That said, I think companies offering tacked on solutions like this is a good idea; then the owner can remove it if they don’t want it. Just like selling bicycles with a bunch of reflectors; those get binned almost immediately.
Yeah, or steering wheels with airbags, usually just one nut and a resistor to turn off the warning light, and you can put on whatever one you want
Yes. So those owners can then start complaining even louder about the price of gas in their truck that gets used in exactly the same way as my hatchback.
I enjoyed the deep dive into dam engineering. Best dam article I’ve read in a while.
Yeah, David’s a damn good dam tour guide…where’s the dam gift shop?
I hoovered up every word.
Something something boulder removing (old) Boulder Dam…
nope. Doesn’t work, but f it, it’s 3 damn 30 in the am
Pretty funny that the article says that their new, upgraded rear suspension is basically the same as a 30 year old Jeep. Maybe they should have further used the 30 year old technology, and figured out how to make it unibody, so that the increase in passenger space wouldn’t increase the height, and make it a lighter, more efficient vehicle, and the air dam wouldn’t be such a necessity.
As a bonus, if the frame rusts through, the rest of the unibody might prevent the vehicle from becoming, a, uh, taco
Same rear suspension as a 33 year old Toyota 4Runner as well to be fair.
I am amazed at how much a difference these dams make for fuel economy. My F250 had an enormous front dam that I replaced with a smaller one (the one that comes with the Tremor package) and my highway MPG went from 24 to 21. That means I am using ~600 extra gallons of $4/gallon diesel fuel per 100,000 miles, so the huge dam actually saves a non-trivial amount of money over the life of the vehicle. It is damn ugly, though.
It sucks the dam is considered part of the Tacoma’s emissions package. It would be easy to remove it or at least trim it, but I imagine that might create issues in states that require inspections. Although, when I lived in a state that had inspections, I found that the vast majority of illegal but not dangerous modifications could be overlooked for $20.
I can’t see any inspector looking for an airdam, or even knowing about it. When I get my car inspected in RI, as long as no codes show on the scanner and I have no CEL, that’s an emissions pass.
I used to inspect cars when I worked in a shop in PA and it was similar in regards to emissions. We were only worried about the monitors being set and the CEL being off. I highly doubt most techs doing inspections would even know there was supposed to be an air dam there in the first place, let alone that it’s technically there for emissions reasons.
Can’t wait for somebody to get a new Tacoma and meticulously test how much of a difference the air dam really makes.
I’ll be surprised if Tacoma forum people aren’t racing to see who can be first to do exactly that.
Cannot wait to hear which states are going to fail a state inspection if the air dam is missing/damaged.
An additional thought….how long till the truck’s emissions system is forced to incorporate an error code if the air dam is missing?
If that’s the case. anything other than OEM make/model/size tire would be a fail too.
For an active dam? I bet there’s an error code already out there. When I tested that overland build Lexus LX earlier this year, there was an error code stored (and illuminating the CEL) for an active grille shutter fault. In my state, that’s an automatic emissions failure.
NY would if it set a CEL.
He’s saying an active air dam (which the Tacoma is not equipped with) would have been considered part of the emissions package. And I believe he’s implying that the cheap plastic air dam that they bolted to the underside of the truck instead is not considered an emissions part, so no one cares if it breaks or is removed.
Thanks for catching my miss.
Two things.
I agree about the video. Its unwatchable. Ads pop up far too frequently, and block the controls so I can’t even mute the volume.
I do believe Matt is working with the backend team to fix that video issue!
As for the lack of comfort in a Tacoma, we cannot fix that.
The video for me is about the bruiser, just as it’s been for the past month or so. It autoplays for as long as I don’t unmute it and then freezes. I appreciate that when Jason has posted embedded videos, he has included a youtube link.
You have some weird browser/computer/phone issues, maybe malware. Zero ads for me, maybe it’s because I have AdBlock Plus extension installed?
Engineer:: We’ve got a problem.
Designer: Yeah?
Engineer: Yes. That great new cab you designed for better seating increases frontal area, which increases drag and impacts performance and economy. See?
Designer: (scrutinizing engineer’s notes) Hmm … well, damn it all!
Engineer: Um, OK.
Can’t wait for all the “I removed the air dam but now I lost 3mpg” forum posts.
I used to have a Tacoma and be active on TacomaWorld; the number of people completely surprised that throwing 35s on a Tacoma would plummet the already horrendous fuel economy was.. laughable. Everyone is surprised the previous gen Tacoma sold so well; if you actually went on TacomaWorld and saw the type of people usually buying them, you’d probably be a whole lot less surprised. TW has to have the highest percentage of complete morons out of any brand/model specific car forum I’ve ever read, VWVortex included.
To be honest, my comment was based on my experience on the Chevy Colorado forums and people wondering the exact same thing.
A lot of that on the 4Runner forums as well. With the number of owners who have no concept of how 4wd works or how to operate a part-time system, it boggles the mind that Toyota is not offering auto 4wd on their 4×4’s.
Everyone has to start somewhere, but so many owners say they bought the 4Runner because it’s the “best off-roader” (it’s not) yet have no idea how or why to engage low range, or why they can’t drive around in 4-HI on dry pavement.
There’s also the complete refusal to admit that any other make of vehicle is also good offroad.
People don’t understand a lot of things like that, roof racks and load bars drop mileage, ski boxes, and towing trailers. Neighbor has a Tesla and tows a small trailer and said his range drops about 20% when he does, another neighbor laughed about how useless an EV is, I pointed out that my low utility trailer drops my mileage by about 10% so 20% isn’t too bad considering a travel trailer. See guys with the lifted trucks and huge tires and wonder how much that messes up the mileage not to mention handling and braking, it’s almost like the design engineers knew what they were doing
A lot of our work trucks have all terrain tires and they make driving on pavement unbearable. Maybe you get used to it after a couple thousand miles, but the rough ride and loud drone give me a headache. I don’t understand how so many people mod their dailies like that.
Depends on the tire. I run BFG KO2’s on my current ZR2 and on my Xterra and have been very happy with them. They’re actually quieter than the stock duratracs on the ZR2.
But yeah, some of the jeep and full size truck guys running mud tires on a squeaky clean rig.. you can hear those tires roaring before they pass.
One of my favourite things is when discussing fuel mileage, people will say “I get xxx miles per tank”. When you ask how much fuel their tank holds, they have no idea. The average person couldn’t tell you how to calculate fuel mileage. The next best is the person who checks on one tank full and says that is the fuel mileage they get.
Like saying a place is 20 minutes away, sort of depends on how and when you drive
Honestly, it’s just off-roading guys in general. The idea of a 4WD with big tires and all sorts of accessories has become so romanticized lately that people can’t come to terms with the fact that modifying a car/truck – especially when you are increasing the “roadforce” as the engineer in the video put it – can have some pretty big impacts on daily drivability.
There’s already a comment in this thread!
Setting arguments about Truck Inflation aside, at least the airdam’s easily removed in October/November and reinstalled in May. I appreciate knowing (apart from cost) why Toyota went with longer threaded hardware versus, say, quick-release Dzus fasteners, as well.
That’s a lotta science words for “we meke truc bigge”
why waste time say lot work when few word do trick?
I know my physics and aerodynamics knowledge is severely limited, but if you have a few chunks of stuff hanging in the wind, how does an even larger, more blunt slab creating more frontal area improve things?
Air flowing under the truck creates a huge amount of drag as it hits the rear axle and other “rough” things under the truck. By redirecting the air flow around the truck (there is less stuff for it to hit around the sides) it is reducing the total overall drag.
There is more science to it but that’s the gist of it.
I know that, but why doesn’t it take more energy to shove air out of the way with a big slab that it would to let it flow past rounded objects like axles and diffs?
in the end there is more surface and turbulence created with everything else under there.
overall, there is less surface/energy needed to deflect the air with the big flat sheet of plastic compared to all of the truck junk underneath that would be affected without it, it’s not just a few large obstacles down there.
That’s not an easy question to answer. Aero can often be counterintuitive sometimes. The real answer would be in the CFD models, without seeing those we just have to settle for “because they said so”
Underbodies are best aerodynamically when the lowest areas, which are what is in the airflow, all roughly line up and form a fairly continuous surface.
Things like half axles and diffs have a lot of empty space around them, which the allows airflow to enter and get disrupted, creating drag. A good solution to this is to cover the floor with flat panels which line up to within 1 inch of how low the axles and diff stick out. This would create an aerodynamically flat floor by reducing Cd and maintaining frontal area, but is likely somewhat expensive and gets in the way of truck activities.
An air dam would ‘hide’ the bumpy front/middle underbody from the bulk of the airflow, which is an area that would’ve increased Cd, at the cost of slightly increasing frontal area. The Cd x Area with the air dam would end up being lower than without it. This solution is definitely draggier than the aforementioned flat floor, but it costs less, is easily removable for truck activities, and still reduces drag/wind noise near the driver.
This chain reaction is the result of a series of vehicle parameters that are generally set in stone. Change one thing, and in order to retain those same parameters, a whole series of other components must be added or modified.
It’s also a pickup truck, what is supposed to be a utility vehicle. Screw looking rugged. Most of these rugged-ooking vehicles aren’t really rugged. But actually being rugged is important for the application, looks aside. This thing could still lose 1/3 of its drag if you cast looks aside, and now you have a large vehicle that can get 30+ mpg highway. Aerodynamacist Phil Knox did some aeromods to his Toyota T100, reducing Cd value to 0.25, and seeing fuel economy on the highway jump to 32 mpg from 23 mpg.
https://ecomodder.com/forum/showthread.php/phil-knox-fleet-34-years-aeromodding-1280.html
This would also allow you to increase ground clearance, while still seeing a net reduction in overall drag. Which would increase real ruggedness and offroadabiity. Above a certain ground height, increasing ground clearance further can actually reduce drag depending upon the vehicle’s shape and how smooth the underside is.
If the aero cover for the bed is an issue regarding fitting cargo, make it retractable.
Thanks for that link, fun rabbit hole for the day
Chances are, their market research and focus groups showed that people who buy these vehicles new dig the rugged look, even if it’s superficial so they make it look more rugged even if some of it is superficial
The T-100 went from 23 to 32 mpg @75mph! F’in incredible!
though I’m curious how the mods on the Type 2 affected cooling, so, thanks for that rabbit hole
This is the benefit of load reduction. Similar results on a proportional basis can apply also to cars with V8s and large engines.
Were money no object to me, I’d love to build a tiny streamlined sports car with an LS series V8 that gets 60 mpg highway(The stock C5 Corvette gets 30 mpg highway, so you’ll need something with half the mass and half the CdA and the engine tuned for lean burn, all which is doable), or a 40+ mpg highway streamliner spaceship-looking sedan with a Hellcat engine. Fact is, we’re being screwed over with intentionally wasteful vehicles. Without exception, everything on the market is style over substance.
All that being true, I feel like a little more styling effort could have gone into making look like less of a slab of wheely bin.
I imagine a lot of drivers will just take it off.
It makes sense, even if it looks horrible.
You know what else looks horrible? The Autopian TV videos! They’re low-res blurry messes and I can’t watch them at all without getting a headache. I’ve got 1 Gbs up and down fiber internet so it’s definitely not a bitrate issue. At least post them on Youtube so we can actually see them!
GR Tacoma, grounded to the ground, hard over on the bed, basically like a sporty Lincoln Blackwood 😛
“We had to make the truck bigger and angrier, and that meant it would use more gas, so we used some screws to attach a very expensive piece of plastic to the bottom of the bumper.”
This is my takeaway as well. Maybe they could have avoided it if they walked away from the Gundam styling. An agro Taco just seems like a contradiction to me.
“We had to make it bigger even though what most Taco lovers want is something the size of an actual mini truck.”
The fact Tacomas are nominally “small(er) trucks” is mind blowing.
Well, if it fixes the awkward seating position it may be worth it. I had an older Tacoma for a company vehicle for a few years and while I liked the truck, the seating position is what has kept me from ever buying one as a personal vehicle.
Care to elaborate on what made the seating position bad?
The seating position is basically sitting on the floor with your legs outstretched in front of you. It’s not very comfortable and has long been one of the chief complaints about the Tacoma from owners. It wasn’t because of seat design or anything, the cab was just too short to have a comfortable seating position with sufficient headroom.
The 4Runner was that way for the longest time too – maybe not as bad as the Tacoma as they did have more seat adjustments, but up until the current gen 4Runner, it was a similar outstretched feeling.
Yeah, my buddy has a 2016 Taco and it’s just.. not comfortable. Last year we road tripped out to Colorado in my.. uh.. Colorado and he commented how much better the seats were.
This was the seating position in the 80s trucks was always like this. I didn’t realize it hadn’t changed in that way. I’ve never like the “kitchen chair” seating most SUV and Trucks and Crossovers have now. Its too tall, too upright. I love the seating position in my 80s Nissan 720s that is low slung like that. Its not quite as low as my 240sx, but still nice and low.
Yep, Whybot nailed it. The seat is very low relative to the floor and pedals, which is fine in a sports car designed around that configuration, but not so great in a truck with truck ergonomics.
The Tacoma seating position is very similar to 3rd and 4th gen F-Bodies that I’ve owned, but with less comfortable seats.
I don’t get the hate. If this was on a GR-86 it would be called a front splitter and it would cost $1500 extra. It would sell out in minutes.
Because it looks like booty, and this is marketed as an “offroader” and so needs a good approach angle.
yeah, can we put yellow guards on it? Maybe the mopar guys will buy some.
If Charger owners could read, they would give you their upvotes.
I built something similar for my ‘83 Subaru. Didn’t test mileage, but it definitely helped crosswind stability and reduced understeer at higher speeds. I mounted it using thumbscrews. Thought of making it retractable, but it looked cooler mounted solidly on the front than behind the apron.
EA81? I loved those as I never could blow one up: my BIL & I joked that valve-float was our revlimiter. I never did get around to an airdamn as I took mine on trails all the time. My vision was from an old picture of an IMSA racecar: a snap-on heavy leather one, and that would have been way too expensive for me at the time
Yeah, the big displacement 1.8 OHV. The airdam was just ABS sheet formed around the front corners and reinforced in the center by some aluminum angle. It was kind if low, but really resilient. I was inspired by ‘70s Euro sport sedans. Also had hood pins, though that was because the hood was so misaligned and I wanted to straighten it out. Had rare 8-spoke alloys on it, too. It actually wasn’t too bad looking, but I wished it were a hardtop.
On both my 91 and 94 Toyota trucks I installed a Stillen air dam. Almost identical design except it bolted directly to the front bumpers for a more integrated look.
It helped gas mileage a lot at higher speeds. It also made a huge difference in buffeting on the interstates, which made extended trips much more tolerable.
This one looks like ass shoved way underneath and back, but it’s better than nothing.
Wish we could up load photos.
Toyota got it lost in translation with the Pandem body kit for lowered street trucks and thought it was PanDam, meaning All-Dam. They certainly gave all the dams with that one.
Those bolts are going to rust solid aren’t they…
It’s clearly a snow plow blade.
In practice, that is exactly what it will end up being in snowy climates.
This all makes sense.
What I don’t understand is why I have one of these on my F350, a vehicle exempt from fuel economy and emissions standards.
Looks cool?
I certainly don’t think so, maybe some people do.
Even though it’s exempt I imagine Ford was trying to squeeze out 1 more MPG for competitions sake. It may look ugly, but if it gives you an extra 20 miles per tank, it may be worth it.
I should really take it off and see.
1 mpg is an almost 10% improvement though; if it was anything close to that I’d be shocked.
Yeah, there’s such a peeing race between automakers when it comes to truck capabilities, if RAM or Chevy/GMC are able to advertise noticeably better fuel economy they will, Ford needs to at least keep pace on all possible fronts regardless of what the government requires
I have never in my life seen an advertisement referencing fuel economy for an HD truck.
There are no numbers on the window sticker. The EPA does not test them. Any testing or numbers would be internal and thus subject to bias.
As long as you know that the EPA numbers are also subject to bias from the manufacturers.
They may not advertise it, but I guarantee Ford knows and cares, even if it’s just for their own internal benchmarks. The fleet customers who buy the trucks by the dozen certainly should care- a few MPG across an entire fleet of delivery trucks over a few years is definitely worth a few hundred extra at time of purchase.
I used to drive F550s at a previous job, a few of which were missing their front air-dams. I was too busy working to pay attention to fuel economy, but I did notice a significant handling difference at highway speeds. If a piece of plastic can have that effect on a heavily-laden medium truck like the F550, I would expect the same of a light truck like an F350.
Other comments have said that the air dam reduced crosswind effects and buffeting/wind noise, which are factors that make more sense than only fuel economy. Pickup trucks in general have very bumpy, draggy and thus wind noisy underfloors, and an air dam would be a much cheaper and feasible solution than covering the underbody with smoothing panels like normal EPA rated cars are doing nowadays.
It may have something to do with cooling. Depending on how it’s set up, it may channel air up to the radiator, or perhaps eliminate a low-pressure area that would channel air away from the radiator.