2024 Toyota Tacoma Trailhunter Review: The One You Really Want

this is the new 2024 Toyota Tacoma Trail Hunter and it's a new version of the Tacoma aimed at overlanders it's also powered by a Hybrid 4cylinder engine but before you complain get this 325 horsepower and 465 pbet of torque it's also the most powerful engine offered in the new Tacoma so new model new engine let's see what's going on here today I'm going to review the new Tacoma Trail Hunter and show you all of its quirks and [Applause] features today's video is brought to you by cars and bids my online Enthusiast car auction site that recently sold this and this and this and this and this check it out at carsand bids.com all right time for the quirks and features of the new Tacoma Trail Hunter now this is based on the brand new Tacoma which is already out and already on sale as of about five or six months ago now I have already reviewed a regular version of the new Tacoma so in this review I'm going to focus specifically on what makes the trail Hunter special which is actually quite a lot to give a little background this is a brand new trim level for the Tacoma and for Toyota in general the trail Hunter and Toyota says it is the ultimate off-road version of the Tacoma to be paired with the other ultimate off-road version of the Tacomo which is of course the TRD Pro but while that's focused more on technical hardcore off-roading and rock crawling this is intended more for overlanding people who like to get off the grid and stay there so we begin today's Trail Hunter Journey under the hood we take a look at the powertrain now all new Tacoma models have a turbocharged 2.4 L 4 cylinder engine the outgoing V6 is gone it's all turbo 4S now but while the base level Tacoma trims have either 230 is horsepower or 280 is horsepower the top level Tacomas like this one have a hybrid component that's added to the turbo 4 cylinder and it brings a lot more power with it 325 horsepower and 465 PB feet of torque so even though it's a Turbo Hybrid 4cylinder it doesn't sound very brwy or or adventurous it has a lot of power to go with it and now on to the equipment so in the off-roader truck and suv world it's becoming common for automakers to partner with well-known aftermarket off-roader companies in order to add special features to their trucks in this case Toyota partnered with ARB which is a tremendously well-known off-roader company from Australia every offroader has at least a couple of ARB items in their Rigs and this truck has its standard from the factory specifically the suspension this is ARB old man emu suspension and Toyota says it gives the truck a little bit of a lift 2 Ines in front and an inch and a half in back but more importantly it was specially tuned for two crucial factors number one is off-road control since overlanders aren't necessarily doing technical rock crawling but usually driving down rutted off-road trails they're going at higher speed so control was important the other focus of the suspension was for better load carrying capabilities than traditional off-road suspension since overlanders often have a significant amount of gear with them that was also a big focus when figuring out the suspension tuning now in this area as you can also see you got Somey Big Tires 33in allterrain Tires great for going Offroad and you have bronze 18in Wheels which frankly just look great I'm not really a black wheel kind of guy and I love these bronze ones the design looks good and bronze really brings it out it's an overall nice look that compliments the truck well and there are a lot more upgrades to cover from this angle you can clearly see the snorkel which dramatically AIDS in your River forting capabilities this comes standard on the trail Hunter and it isn't offered on other Tacoma models so it's a pretty cool special feature in this version the trail Hunter also comes standard with steel rock rails as you can see that go the entire way down the side of the truck down both doors and the rocker panels to protect the truck from any damage on the trails up front you have special LED fog lights and you have the TRD light bar which goes across the front end and you can have it turn on with your high beams in order to illum at the world in front of you if for example you're driving on a trail late at night trying to find a campsite you're not sure where you are you got all the lighting in the world to figure it out another Trail Hunter specific item is the shape and angle and design of the front bumper Toyota says this is a special high clearance front bumper and of course it improves the approach angle in order to allow this to climb over more stuff and then there's the underbody protection Toyota says the trail hunter gets the most of any Tacoma including the TRD Pro you have special protection up front and for the differential and the transmission you get more steel underbody protection to make sure that it's not stuck or hung up on any rock or Trail obstacle and on that subject one very cool feature of the new Tacoma Trail Hunter is the exhaust which doesn't exit in the back of the truck like basically everything else but instead it has an early exit before the rear axle and the benefit there is is they didn't have to figure out how to make the exhaust go around the rear axle then it could get hit with something underneath and damage it or just generally lower your ground clearance by ending here the exhaust actually benefits your off-roading capabilities and next up we move on to the back of the Tacoma Trail Hunter where you instantly notice these red recovery hooks that are stuck onto the rear bumper that's a cool feature to have can be very desirable and useful when you're off-roading unfortunately you do not have similar hooks in front if you look way under the front of the truck and get really down there you can see one potential recovery hook under there but I don't know why they don't just have them easily accessible and sticking out this is a drawback of a lot of Toyota's off-roader models but beyond the hooks you also have this steel bumper which is apparently shared with the TRD Pro Model this is an ARB bumper it comes from that partnership that I mentioned earlier and of course it adds some toughness to this truck but despite adding that toughness one cool feature of this ARB bumper it still incorporates rear parking sensors so you still have that feature even though you have a steel bumper usually in the off-roading world it's one or the other but not here and you still have a blind spot monitoring system same deal you don't have to take that out often the sensors are in the bumper but in this truck they're included from the factory steel and next let's talk bed because there's a lot of cool stuff to cover in the beds starting with maybe the coolest thing of all this bar going across the rear of the the bed and kind of coming down the sides this is an ARB accessory as well again included with this truck from ARP and they call it a utility bar I'm not exactly sure how much utility it actually offers but the sides are removable if you wanted to put something through it and I guess you could stick stuff on the side if you wanted to kind of keep it in place regardless it certainly looks cool I think that's the primary utility and definitely adds to the overall appearance of the truck one other interesting exter ior feature overlanding focused you can see there are little LED lights installed on the side of the bed on the outside not just on the inside Toyota refers to this as bed scene lighting and I guess the thinking is you pull up to your campsite late at night you can turn on these lights in order to get well some more light illumination around your area so you know where to set up I could see how it could be useful but it's certainly an interesting feature next up we go into the bed where the trail Hunter has an integrated air compressor so you can air up your tires without having to get some accessory air compressor maybe you lose it or you damage it here it's included in the truck the only drawback is it takes up a surprising amount of space the compressor itself is inside this panel as you can see labeled compressor then the controls for it are in this panel above where you adjust the actual pressure you want your tires too and then over on the other side of the truck there's more compressor Tools in this panel specifically I guess this is where the hoses would be to actually hook it up to your tires it's a lot of bed space taken up when most portable compressors are smaller than that and worth pointing out this truck also has a regular household power outlet in the bed that could easily just power a portable compressor so maybe having the compressor in the bed isn't as useful as you think but it is here it is nice to have and Toyota says it's exclusive to the trail Hunter even the TRD Pro doesn't get the compressor now also worth pointing out one other cool bed touch this isn't unique to the trail Hunter but you can open up the tailgate by pressing a little button that's integrated into the tail light you push this and the tailgate comes down which is a nice little convenience touch and if you push it again the tailgate goes right back up it closes automatically which is also a nice feature to have and you have the same button integrated over on the other side in the opposite tail light so regardless of which area you're walking up to this truck it's easy to lower or raise the bed literally with the push of a button next up let's talk badging and the trail Hunter brand you can see the badge right here Trail Hunter and there's even a little logo they've come up with with like a compass on it pointing to the north with a red arrow and a t in the center that stands for trail Hunter and also Toyota now I mentioned this badging and branding specifically because Toyota told me they're going to come out with a trail Hunter version of the new 4Runner as well ALS also aimed at overlanders and so I could see the trail Hunter badge starting to find its way into a lot of different new Toyota off-road models with an overlanding Focus just like TRD Pro has found its way into various models as well and you have this Trail Hunter branding in various places throughout the truck you have it on the tailgate you can see a relatively subtle Trail Hunter badge but it's there if you know what to look for and in the headlights there's a small little spot integrated in the headlights that says Trail Hunter to remind you that this is a special Tacoma and the trail Hunter branding is also carried into the interior as you might expect you open up the door and you immediately see Trail Hunter on the floor mat and you see Trail Hunter on the door panel along with the new cool Trail Hunter logo as well now the interior of this truck also has some pretty significant goodies beyond what you get in a standard Tacoma a lot of it is shared with the TRD Pro but some of it isn't and certainly the topof the line particularly in terms of off-roader equipment but before I get to that let's talk seats you have this special seat design perforated soft Tex they call it it's not actual leather but it feels just like it and it looks really good and premium and high quality and the dashboard has its own special texture material as you can see on the passenger side where it says Toyota in massive lettering under that it almost looks like a fo kind of marble finish that certainly pretty distinctive and cool now as for that Toyota on the passenger side of the dashboard you can see it's trimmed in yellow and there's yellow stitching throughout this cabin the TRD Pro Models I get in that's all trimmed in Red so maybe they're giving TRD Pro the red color and Trail Hunter will take yellow I suppose it remains to be seen now one other thing before I get into the cool off-road touches worth pointing out this truck also has some nice luxury features as well like heated and ventilated front seats along with a heated steering wheel and a heads up display that's not much in terms of luxury but it is for a Tacoma it's actually a pretty big deal and this truck has that stuff which goes along with paying extra for the trail Hunter but anyway next up let's talk off-road gear a lot of it is controlled here in the center console where you start with a switch that puts you into four-wheel drive high or low it's kind of a weird operation you push in the side and then twist the switch to go between two wheel drive four high and four low now directly sitting on top of that you have a dial and in this Dial's default form it adjusts the drive mode you're in so sport or Eco or normal but you can press these buttons on the top to have the dial control other things MTS stands for multi-terrain select which is Toyota's terrain select tool you can choose sand or rocks or mud and the vehicle will adjust its driving style tailored to the terrain you're on you can also use these buttons to turn on Crawl control which is Toyota's fantastic off-road cruise control control make sure you don't get stuck system that really works well I know because it saved me on a few occasions it's really excellent and that's how you operate it now moving on to these buttons here in the center console you have one that disconnects the stabilizer bars which allows for more off-road articulation you also have your rear Locker control here as you can see and you have a button with a camera on it that's marked view if you press this button while you're in drive it turns on Toyota's multi-terrain monitor system and it puts a view on the in rainment screen showing what's going on around you and what's directly ahead the goal here is to help you off-roading you can see the obstacles that are coming up on this giant screen which is actually fairly useful now beyond all the tech there are also some other nice interior upgrades for the off-roader Tacoma models to the left of the steering wheel you have a few auxiliary switches these buttons aren't connected to anything but if you install some sort of cool aftermarket accessory like a winch or extra light bars you can hook it up to that and it saves you the trouble of wiring in some janky aftermarket looking switch onto your dashboard you also have this cool grab handle over here on the passenger side that's rubber lined you can hold on to it while the driver does crazy stuff and hang on for dear life and on the door panels you have some cool storage compartments you can see them here an upper and a lower storage compartment to add some practicality to the trail Hunter another nice feature of the trail Hunter is the rear viw mirror which is also a camera you can see right now it's a mirror and it functions as a mirror but if you flip this switch at the bottom it becomes a camera which is especially nice if you have people in the back seat you can't look through them but when you're in camera mode you have a perfect view behind you even if there's people in back I love this feature but the drawback for this truck is the camera is mounted here kind of on the front side of the bed which means if you put on a bed cap or if you have the Bed full of accessories or whatever the camera isn't going to work work it would have been better if they had put it on the back of the tailgate but that's not what they did so then you would have to go back to just regular mirror driving like a plebian and finally we move on to the back seat of the new Trail Hunter which is reasonably sized not exactly huge back here but you got enough space for your head for your legs you're kind of pushing up against the seat kind of right up against the headliner if you're a taller adult but you do have space back here in a decent size rear seat and it's worth pointing out that all Trail Hunter models will have the same sized rear seat because all of these will be four-door Crew Cabs there's no short cab no single cab Trail Hunters they all come like this now other items worth pointing out in back for one thing you got some charge ports back here two USBC which is nice and a household which is always nice to have inside the cab in addition to in the bed so it's good to see that they did that you also have specialized Trail Hunter floor mats with sort of a relief map off-roader area on it and the trail Hunter logo in a corner and the seats themselves are just like the ones in front this nice kind of perforated faux leather with yellow trim all around and nice yellow stitching that carries on to the back they didn't cheap out back here and it still looks pretty nice then again I would expect it to look fairly nice in back and everywhere else because the sticker price of this truck is around $63,000 which is big money for a Toyota Tacoma but I guess Toyota would argue hey this is ready TurnKey to go off-roading you don't have to buy a Tacoma and then hook it up with all sorts of accessories it's all already here buy it from the dealer and take it Offroad while you still have temporary plates on it that's the life and with that in mind now it's time for me to get behind the wheel and see how it is to drive the trail Hunter all right driving the Tacoma Trail Hunter this is an interesting truck looking at on the outside it just looks cool and reading about it you know the TRD Pro has been so successful it makes sense that they come out with another kind of companion piece truck I'm not really going to be able to off-road it very much unfortunately that was the plan today but unfortunately it rained heavily overnight and so the off-road area where we were going to go was basically washed out it's just super muddy um like like squeam little squirmy mud not really good for getting any actual real off-roading in but I'll at least be able to drive it a little bit at the the end of the day just like the TRD Pro I think most people will probably end up driving these on pavement and so I can at least give you my thoughts there so first things first driving this truck I can tell you right away the ride quality is a little rough it is at the end of the day A Truck Body on frame you know pickup trucks tend to be pretty unsettled in terms of ride quality this is definitely no different the OM suspension the shocks doesn't really enhance the ride quality as it turns out sometimes that can be the case longer travel suspension not really the situation here it is a pretty rough riding truck it's totally usable daily if you want to it's just not going to be luxur car it's not going to give you any sort of like a calm collected feeling when you get onto any sort of rough pavement it is a reasonably rough ride but the next thing you notice and this is a much better thing the powertrain is excellent I just got done driving the new Land Cruiser which has this powertrain that video is already up for some reason this power train seems even more muscular in this truck they've given it some form of exhaust tuning or something it sounds more muscular and it feels more muscular on the on the great historical theory that an exhaust makes anything faster but it does seem like that here regardless of the exhaust though and just really looking at the actual performance I mean this truck is pretty quick people are going to immediately say well it's a four cylinder well it's this well it's that true I mean all that's true but when we actually look at the numbers it's really kind of hard to complain it's fast it feels like it's fun to drive it's quick to accelerate mid-range power is good passing power is is good the hybrid system the turbocharger really fills in the gaps that you would have gotten in a V6 back in the old days and it it just drives reasonably well there's not much else you can say but it's good now I have driven already the regular Tacoma with the base powertrain and a manual transmission this particular Tacoma with more power and an automatic definitely feels a lot more muscular so if you were wondering you know is there really a difference since they're both the same engine just one has the hybrid assist the answer is yeah even with the stick shift the base model does not feel anywhere near this Lively or perky I will say here now that I'm back on pavement I mentioned earlier that the ride quality is not so great I was on um kind of a rough road but here back on pavement I have to say that the the ride is actually okay certainly better than I was thinking that it was on that rough road it's totally tolerable it's totally doable it is just rougher than a car or a luxury vehicle or a lot of other stuff that you could probably buy at this price point like ex or a BMW but I think a lot of the people who buy this car this truck are not really going to be looking for that ride quality they're going to kind of know that and that's going to be okay there's a large amount of Turbo noise which is kind of cool but also surprising let's just leave it at that um it's like what a kid would install a blowoff valve in his Genesis Coupe surprised to see it in a Tacoma from the factory but it it it's there and it does actually add to the experience a little bit it makes it sound cooler but it also just makes it sound a little bit less serious in terms of steering and handling it's about what you'd expect from a truck um there's it's not really quick at all there's a little bit less body roll than you might expect just given modern advances and suspension and stuff particularly since the last Acoma came out but it's not like you can really turn the wheel quickly and get you know amazing Precision or tremendously quick steering response really overall driving it around in in normal driving it's it's fine um good driving position good engine power a lot of nice things about it I will say you I'm getting 12 m per gallon I I think most people will be able to do better than that but Toyota's decision to switch to hybrid turbo engines and and smaller sizes it doesn't seem like it's really paid off for them in terms of the fuel economy gains maybe it's a little better than it would have been with a V6 uh but not as much better as you might hope but you still do get a lot of power which is great um and the truck it just it feels like a good place to be nice place to spend time drives reasonably well um and you get that boost sound which is just cool and so that's the new 2024 Toyota Tacoma Trail Hunter the new Tacoma for overlanders hybrid power and a four cylinder may be controversial but this truck delivers just like the Tacoma always has and now it's time to give the trail Hunter a Doug score and the Doug score is here 55 out of 100 which puts the trail Hunter here against Rivals it does a fantastic job of clawing its way near the top against some very impressive competition like the new Chevy Colorado desert boss and the Jeep Gladiator ultimately though the trail Hunter wins the day because it combines Tacoma coolness and desirability with a great powertrain excellent off-road equipment good practicality and Toyota's reputation for Quality the desert boss is great the new ranger Raptor will be awesome but Toyota is working hard to fend off The Challengers and so far they seem to be succeeding [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Doug DeMuro

Views: 397,084

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Id: 6Utfqen_pCY

Length: 23min 23sec (1403 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 23 2024