Stuck4ger
Well-known member
- Joined
- Dec 6, 2019
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- Location
- Cape Canaveral, FL
- Vehicles
- Cyberbeast
- Occupation
- Aerospace
- Thread starter
- #1
I have a 2007 FJ Cruiser which has suited my needs well for 270,000 road and mountain miles. But I’m not a truck guy, yet I reserved a CyberTruck with the intention of making it my one and only vehicle, quite possibly my last. Now, with the 5-year-long CyberTruck tunnel of purgatory nearing an end, and after reading some unfavorable CT reviews (and even a couple shocking reports of folks reportedly wanting to get rid of their new CTs!), I decided to reach out to a forum member in the PNW (where I’d be visiting) to see if I could sweet talk him into letting me test drive his truck. Somewhat surprisingly, despite not knowing me from Adam, he readily agreed and offered much more than simply letting me drive it around the block.
Since I was going to be on the road for a week, I decided to rent a conventional full-sized truck both to see how much I liked it as a daily vehicle as well as to better compare the CT to.
My rental was a 2025 GMC 1500 with a decent number of options (see photo). My initial impression was it was a beast but not in a good way — more like driving a cruise ship around when I really wanted to drive a PT boat. I had to think which way to enter and exit a parking lot in order to ensure I could make it out without holding up traffic with a 3-pt (or greater) turn. I learned I really needed to back it into parking stalls because it was more maneuverable that way and I had the aid of a rearview camera (but on a woefully small screen). And I took it on a 4-WD road that gradually got so tight I finally had to cry uncle and back it out of there, unable to find a place large enough to turn around for the better part of a mile.
But the bottom line was it was enough to make me seriously question how much I’d like a CT as my daily vehicle, one that I hoped to essentially do periods of van life in.
After meeting for dinner we drove to his mountain retreat and he put me in the drivers seat of his AWD CT. I drove up a generally paved but pothole-ridden single-lane mountain road. The ride was amazing, so smooth yet so nimble with power waiting to be asked for. The one-pedal driving with regenerative braking was smooth and felt natural both uphill and downhill. (It makes me incredulous that people somehow complain about it!)
The A-pillar blind spot that people mention exists in both trucks but is easier to deal with in the CT because it is broken up with the little window and the side view mirror and mounting hardware blocks much less vision than the Ram. But it’s different, perhaps because the apex of it is so much further in front of you in the CT. I did find myself looking to the inside of the A-pillar on some left turns in the CT, something that I never felt an urge to do in the Ram.
To top it off, we spent the night and went for another drive the next day that was more high speed cruising up a mountain highway to the top of a mountain pass. So I felt especially blessed to see both low speed off-road and high speed cruising modes with different steering and suspension configurations.
The bottom line is I absolutely loved the CT and my partner absolutely loved riding in it. In fact, she badmouthed the Ram most of the drive back to Seattle. I am thrilled and relieved that I now have zero second thoughts about my Beast order and cannot wait until it arrives this fall!
Since I was going to be on the road for a week, I decided to rent a conventional full-sized truck both to see how much I liked it as a daily vehicle as well as to better compare the CT to.
My rental was a 2025 GMC 1500 with a decent number of options (see photo). My initial impression was it was a beast but not in a good way — more like driving a cruise ship around when I really wanted to drive a PT boat. I had to think which way to enter and exit a parking lot in order to ensure I could make it out without holding up traffic with a 3-pt (or greater) turn. I learned I really needed to back it into parking stalls because it was more maneuverable that way and I had the aid of a rearview camera (but on a woefully small screen). And I took it on a 4-WD road that gradually got so tight I finally had to cry uncle and back it out of there, unable to find a place large enough to turn around for the better part of a mile.
But the bottom line was it was enough to make me seriously question how much I’d like a CT as my daily vehicle, one that I hoped to essentially do periods of van life in.
After meeting for dinner we drove to his mountain retreat and he put me in the drivers seat of his AWD CT. I drove up a generally paved but pothole-ridden single-lane mountain road. The ride was amazing, so smooth yet so nimble with power waiting to be asked for. The one-pedal driving with regenerative braking was smooth and felt natural both uphill and downhill. (It makes me incredulous that people somehow complain about it!)
The A-pillar blind spot that people mention exists in both trucks but is easier to deal with in the CT because it is broken up with the little window and the side view mirror and mounting hardware blocks much less vision than the Ram. But it’s different, perhaps because the apex of it is so much further in front of you in the CT. I did find myself looking to the inside of the A-pillar on some left turns in the CT, something that I never felt an urge to do in the Ram.
To top it off, we spent the night and went for another drive the next day that was more high speed cruising up a mountain highway to the top of a mountain pass. So I felt especially blessed to see both low speed off-road and high speed cruising modes with different steering and suspension configurations.
The bottom line is I absolutely loved the CT and my partner absolutely loved riding in it. In fact, she badmouthed the Ram most of the drive back to Seattle. I am thrilled and relieved that I now have zero second thoughts about my Beast order and cannot wait until it arrives this fall!
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