2021 Toyota 4Runner TRD Off-Road vs. Ford Bronco Badlands

because you asked for it we brought together the all-new 2021 ford bronco badlands and our in-house 2021 toyota 4runner trd off-road which is the king of the hill we'll find out right now [Music] first let's meet the contenders the 2021 ford bronco we're testing is the two-door badlands with the sasquatch off-road package that means it arrived with 35-inch mud terrain tires locking differentials in the front and the back a disconnectable front sway bar and the advanced four-wheel drive system with a 10-speed automatic transmission and trail control the engine included was the top spec 2.7 liter ecoboost v6 which produces up to 330 horsepower and 415 pound-feet of torque prices you see it here 56 150 us dollars including destination the 4runner is a 2021 trd off-road premium that we bought for the channel earlier this year it features a v6 that produces up to 270 horsepower and 278 pound-feet of torque the transmission is a five-speed automatic yes exactly half the gears as the bronco that powers the part-time four-wheel drive hardware since this is a trd off-road it came standard with all the off-road goodies including rear locking differential a-trac traction system multi-terrain select and crawl control we acquired the trd off-road with the stock all-season radials and upgraded the tires after the fact most dealers do offer an upgraded all-terrain package on the trd models at the time of purchase we put on toyota trd pro wheels with falcon wild peak at3w all-terrain tires prices you see it here 46 000 us dollars including the wheel and tire package so the way that today is going to work is we have a number of mini courses around this hill and we're going to run each vehicle one after the other i'm going to start with the bronco and then do the forerunner and we're going gonna see exactly not just can they get up because we know they can it's how they do it which one's easier which one is more fun and at the end of the day which one should you buy we're gonna get started with the bronco in the bronco it of course has this modern massive screen which is to be honest pretty gorgeous also i have a front camera which i really wish the forerunner had so let's go ahead and lock that rear diff so we can get a little push up the hill what i really want to do is show how that front wheel is going to lift a little bit [Music] okay is that wheel off the ground so what i'm going to go ahead do is then release the front sway bar and we'll see what happens here and boom we're on the ground and up we go i mean it makes it so easy because one of the critical components with you know going off-road is making sure you can keep your wheels on the ground that's one thing that crossovers cannot do doesn't matter how capable they are they're just not designed for that kind of articulation and boom it just makes it so easy how well does the forerunner do we've never taken it up this particular leg so it'll be interesting to see big difference here between the 4runner and the bronco is that the 4runner actually has a lever for switching into 4 low so i'm going to go put it into neutral i'm going to go 4 low wait for the lights we're in 4 low the bronco got up that with just the rear diff locked and the sway bar release so i want to see if i can go up it with just the rear diff locked now that is one feature that you can only get on a trd off-road and above sr5s do not have that feature so i'm going to go up here hit the button there i'm not going to turn on a track at all this is strictly four low and the rear diff lock which is exactly how we went up with the bronco now clearance is an issue here the bronco has 11 and a half inches of ground clearance with those 35s the 4runner here and 9 and a half with 32s i might have gained maybe half an inch because these wheels are 7 inch as opposed to seven and a halfs that are stocked so i get a little bit more ground clearance but nothing significant [Music] i'm gonna see saw a little bit and up we go okay so both of them could do that one and that was a pretty gnarly little climb but nothing to challenge the forerunner or the bronco what we can do next in this first test you can see that both vehicles did just fine they got through it no problem of course the extra clearance from the sasquatch package on the bronco does give it an edge but it is important to note that without the optional extra-large 35-inch mud terrains the bronco only has 8.4 inches of ground clearance that's one inch less than the forerunner both of these rigs have a form of off-road cruise control let's see which is better using a part of the course that we've used for other tests in the past the main obstacle here is a deep offset rut and the surface is compacted dirt it's starting to rain out although the surface isn't getting too moist yet so i don't think it's really going to change anything but we'll keep an eye on that i am wearing a coat now though so the next test we're going to do here is trail control we're going to test out trail control on this vehicle and then in the forerunner we're going to use what they call crawl control same basic idea now what this does is it optimizes traction by using individual wheel braking to be able to get us up difficult things with minimal input all i'm going to be doing is steering i want to set this back to basically starting over here we are going to put it into four low so that's the first thing that i'm going to turn on that turns on the trail camera up here which i love this is great i really wish the 4runner had something like that and then the next thing i'm going to hit is the button in the middle now this turns on one pedal drive but if i use the set button on cruise control it'll also set the drive speed in one and one and a half mile per hour increments i'm going to let the vehicle cruise control off-road up this climb i haven't enabled any features other than four low and trail control i haven't touched any of these options and let's see how well it does if it runs into problems we'll turn on the rear locker and if it has more problems we'll start playing with some of the other buttons as well okay here we go so set speed for one and a half that's a little fast and we'll just ease up this now so far i am just in four low i have no other features on we'll see if this can figure it out or if we're just going to dig a hole oh it's sorting it it's sorting it it's using wheel breaking to get us up it this may not be the most [Music] um competent looking climb but it's making it come on you got this you got this you got this it's shifting power around i am not going to quit i'm just going to let it do its thing don't have my foot on the gas or the brake yet it doesn't seem like it's actually doing it so let's let's give a little steering input just to see if that's going to help no i think we're just digging a hole oh it's adjusting it's adjusting as you can see here the trail control system should do a better job at redistributing power from the spinning wheel we can see slight hesitations but no meaningful power transfer to the wheels with grip i'm still not going to do any features i'm just going to roll back just a little bit put it back into drive keep it set on trail control and let it do its thing [Music] oh it's so close [Music] come on [Music] okay i give up engaging rear diff and trail control re-engaged and then we just roll out of it so i was just curious you know like if somebody who has no experience doesn't know what any of these do could we get up that using just trail control no apparently not so it'll be interesting to see now can the forerunner get up with just crawl control yeah so i do want to note here that the bronco just dug a half foot to one foot ditch here uh that might affect the forerunner crew said hey you want to fill that in i said nope we're gonna get the forerunner to drive over it maybe all i'm gonna be is in four low which we have the lever in place and i'm going to turn on the crawl control the crawl control here isn't in speed increments it is in uh random numbers so we have a one to five oh actually let's get that before we turn that on let's get that rear diff unlocked and i'm going to enable crawl control we have one through five and we're going to start it with the slowest now immediately you hear the toyota is really loud whereas the ford was just driving in autopilot this one sounds like it's it's like hammers going on and can it crawl up without issue we're going to try to take the same line i got nick directing me outside to make sure that we're doing the same line can it get through it no problem i think that means yeah the toyota crawl control is superior to the broncos trail control or whatever they call it i'm kind of surprised i would think that they would uh you know it's this has been around for a while you think they would have made improvements by now but nope okay i wonder what else we can do here the broncos trail control system simply wasn't up to even a modest off-road obstacle without getting an assist from the locking rear differential that means that if you are considering a lower cost bronco you should move up to the black diamond or outer banks at least to get the locker trail control by itself just isn't very useful without it on the other hand toyota's crawl control which is based on their a-track traction system effectively emulates front and rear lockers without the additional expense the bronco may have more tools in its toolbox but when comparing just trail control and crawl control the toyota was superior however i want to give the ford a second chance so now i'm going to get back in and try some of the more advanced modes and see how well it does but i'm not going to go all the way to turning on all the features i want to give trail control a fighting chance okay so now i'm going to go back to mud ruts which will put us into four high i'm disabling the rear diff lock crawl control on this is the most basic basic of the off-road settings which is why it's in for high not for low [Music] it's bronco all right okay i i think we're i think we're good there so the only thing really to do at this point is go ahead and we're just going to dial it all the way over to rock crawl rear diff lock front sway bar released drive and now we'll let crawl control go up yeah there we go does trail control work in reverse oh it does i am now driving one mile per hour backwards using trail control in reverse no foot on the brake will just let it ease us down toyota's crawl control also works in reverse just by the way now let's go on to the toe test i'm going to pretend that my intern over there stranded our 4runner and we're going to tow it out up this slightly off camber incline i'm going to go ahead and switch it to 4 low and i just want 4 low i'm not going to turn on any other features at this point now one of the big things here is of course also being able to use the camera to help me align with my towing so you can see that we actually have a tow line right in the middle there which is nice although our hook is actually on i think that side okay so let's go ahead and do it so i'm going to try to align down the path here so what we're emulating is two people out wheeling somebody gets messed up how easy is it to use the supplied tools to get the job done now this is very tight i'm using just the camera to back up and the camera is fantastic on this it's got good resolution good color i can really see the detail and those wheel tracking lines are really helpful so this is on a real soft surface too okay i think we're close enough there i'm gonna put it in the put park brake on both of these vehicles have readily accessible toe points okay so first thing i'm going to do is just get that line taut what i want to do is actually look at my surround view camera so that here i can oh i have wheel tracks oh that's so cool and then we can see when that line gets taut in the back the line right back there there we go okay that's what i wanna do i wanna ease up just a little bit just a little bit so can this 2.7 liter ecoboost motor pull a forerunner to safety and how much work does it take actually i don't even really feel like i'm towing much of anything here this is so easy now we do have a steep rise here so let's see how this rise does whoa whoa whoa let's uh release a little bit can it do it [Music] oh okay let's turn on that front locker [Music] we need a little momentum here he's jammed on a log i don't want to yank the line i just want to gradually get it and we'll get momentum up this hill yeah there we go just need a momentum oh that's a bit of a yank okay and we freed the forerunner now can the forerunner free the bronco that's a big question now we're set up to do the reverse we're going to use the 4runner here to tow the bronco to safety so right off the bat this rear view camera on the 4runner is just awful all of toyota's rear view cameras are like circa 1980s these are horrible um detail is not very good yes it's good enough and i do have a tow hitch line so i know where my center is but i don't have wheel tracking there's no detail it's just not very usable especially compared to the bronco the broncos camera is brilliant okay i think that's close enough put it in park let's get this on so for this one i'm gonna use the turnbuckle in the front the buckles on this bronco work with three-quarter receivers just perfectly oh that's nice that's really nice so on the back of the four runner i only have the one loop yeah i want to cross that okay there we go okay tow hook engaged now like the last time i am going to go ahead and put on that rear lock put it into drive i am in four low just like last time with the bronco because i need to multiply that torque i don't have a rear camera while i'm driving forward so can you tell me when my slack is taken up you're just about there slow right there okay can this v6 naturally aspirate with 270 horsepower pull the bronco to safety oh it's working it's working huh i think getting these larger tires over this would have been easier give a little but more of a bump over this log back here let's do that again rolling backwards if you look at my front wheels you can see that the forerunner is getting hung up on a small stump without a front camera or spotter i simply couldn't see it if i knew would it have changed the outcome possibly but the win on this test still goes to the bronco okay um yeah forerunner not as good at recovery which is disappointing the v6 just couldn't do it needs bigger tires maybe if i air down did a whole bunch of stuff but you know apples to apples factory tire pressure just the way they're delivered although this one does have the all-terrain tires still couldn't do it let's unstrap this and then we'll do some final thoughts filming two entire reviews with the badlands sasquatch bronco and of course owning the 4runner i can't wait to get back into my 4runner because at the end of the day it is more than capable enough for everything that i need plus it is way more comfortable on the freeway i can drive this at 70 and 80 miles per hour and have a pleasant conversation in it you cannot say the same for the bronco and it's not just the tires it's the design it's this removable top they are problematic if you want something comfortable on the freeway however when the dirt hits this thing is pretty incredible i would say that it is very much on par with the current jeep wrangler it really just matters of whether or not you like the tech in here you like the looks in here or if you want you know that classic solid axle but as we saw with this vehicle the fact that it's independent front suspension did not hinder it a bit so which would you pick post a comment below for driving sports tv i'm ryan douthit thanks for watching we'll see you again right here next week

Channel: Driving Sports TV

Views: 716,555

Keywords: car review, driving sports tv, 2021 ford bronco, new bronco, jeep wrangler, ford bronco 2021, 2021 ford bronco sport badlands, 2021 toyota 4runner, toyota 4runner, 2021 ford bronco 2 door, ford bronco off road, 2021 4runner, Ford Bronco vs Toyota 4Runner, Bronco vs 4Runner, Toyota vs Ford, Off-Road Recovery, Trail Control vs Crawl Control, Crawl Control Test, Trail Control Test

Id: Z8FlRMwiJy4

Length: 22min 48sec (1368 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 13 2021