2023 GMC Sierra 1500 vs 2024 Toyota Tundra

Take a step back and think about a full-size truck from the early 2000s. The nicest creature comforts included leather upholstery, an upgraded stereo, and, if you were lucky, heated seats. Today, nearly every luxury-car feature has found its way into high-end pickups. We’ve blown past heated leather seats; you can now get features like massaging seats in a full-size truck. The same brinksmanship that applies to pickup-truck capability now also applies to the luxury trims.

This is very evident in the 2023 GMC Sierra 1500. The Denali trim is what kicked off the idea of a “lux truck,” and it has been joined by the Ford F-150 Limited and Ram 1500 Limited. Those competitors deliver a higher grade of refinement than the Denali was providing. But upping the ante is a constant state in the truck market, and GMC now offers a Denali Ultimate trim that includes nearly every single option and package. So is the Denali Ultimate the new standard of luxury among full-size trucks?

Toyota has been trying to crack the full-size pickup truck code for over 30 years. The company’s first try was the T100, followed by three generations of Tundras that got bigger and more capable with each redesign. The 2024 Tundra is a massive Texas-built truck, but it still can’t match the towing and payload capacities of the segment leader, and it bests only the Ram 1500 when it comes to towing a trailer. The Tundra also lacks the diversity of configurations you’ll find at the Chevy, Ford, and Ram stores.

Verdict: When you talk to longtime Tundra owners and recent converts, the common theme is reliability. We can’t tell you if the current third-generation Tundra is reliable after many years of service, but Toyotas are well-known for their dependability. So, if you like the 2024 Toyota Tundra and it can serve your needs, help it to pull up a chair to the big boy's truck table.