Toyota Tacoma TRD Off-Road vs Chevy Colorado Z71 - sand and rock crawl test

welcome to the driver's seat no we have not switched from reviewing cars to reviewing votes we're still all about cars and trucks in fact that's what we're here to talk about you know years ago trucks were really just for workers there were four blue-collar people they only came in regular cab now it's all about extra cab it's become a lifestyle and two of the biggest lifestyle trucks were introduced last year this is the 2016 Colorado Duramax diesel and it has really pushed that truck the Tacoma into a kind of a sales war so we really have for the first time in a long time a true midsize truck competition one thing I learned about all you guys that have trucks is that you're passionate passion needs to be about sports cars it's more about trucks these days and over the next five days we're gonna get these trucks buried in sand dunes and see which one can get out and the best of all a rock crawl test so putting these things to the limit we're gonna have a lot of fun and you're going to be right there with us all right we're just up here on a very steep grade at Pismo Beach probably 25 30 degrees and as you can see we're getting our Tacoma really buried the sands coming up over the hood I'm going nowhere all right so we were in for high now we're gonna go into for low so we're stuck at four low we're stuck in for high there's no getting out of this so now we're gonna put it in crawl control in order to do that we're gonna push this button you have to be in either Drive or reverse I'm gonna go into reverse pushing my craw button you can hear the four-wheel drive system really working hard this crawl control system is looking for any type of traction it can get back and forth until it finds that optimization I'm gonna switch to two sometimes you just need to turn the steering wheel a little bit start to see the rear raising a little bit just like that magic didn't have to call anyone for a toe crawl control did it all by itself amazing we just took the exact same path that we took with the Tacoma or in for high just like we did with the Tacoma now we're gonna go shift into neutral put it into for low so with the Tacoma we had the option of using crawl control we don't have that option with the Colorado z71 4x4 Duramax it's a great truck but at this point we're gonna have to get someone to tow us out but before we do that we're gonna try and take some air out of the tires first kind of a trick of a lot of off-roaders so let's see how that goes okay we just spent about 10 minutes taking the tire pressure down from about 39 psi to 17 hopefully this will work and we won't have to use our toe straps but if it does work now we're gonna have to go get air before we get on the highway something you wouldn't have to do would a tacoma equipped with crawl control okay we took our tire pressure down to 17 psi all around and that old off-roaders trick is not working we are stuck and we're gonna have to get some elbow Colorado very capable and a great truck and it's alright but on this particular day under these conditions you really need something like this with crawl control [Music] round one of our off-road test concluded with a clear victory for the Tacoma crawl control proved to be a very important technology to get it out of the sand now we're doing something else rock crawling outside of Big Bear California let's Coleman has some advantages because of the one-inch extra ground clearance it also has crawl control and a 32 degree angle of approach versus the Colorado which has a 17 degree angle of approach and the reason it does that is because of the air dam what we did if you look down here is removed the air dam it's primarily there for fuel economy which is what you'll find on other Tacoma vehicles but being a true off-road vehicle and wanting a head-to-head apples to apples comparison we removed it we are on an off-road trail just outside of Big Bear California called n61 this is where jeeps go but we're pretty confident both these trucks can do this so good for low and you can see where we're just not going anywhere so this is where we're gonna go into crawl control we just hit it and we're gonna see what happens I'm not even pushing the accelerator all I'm doing is steering and just like that I'm gonna cancel Carl control it we're clear now we're gonna see what the Colorado can do the certain the z71 brand is synonymous with off-roading this is pretty severe off-roading win for low we don't have crawl control but we think this truck could make it first test done is we didn't need crawl control but we have some more aggressive stuff ahead our next rock crawl test is significantly more challenging that's because these are very vertical large rocks what we're going to do is just kind of rest up against these rocks and see how it goes we're still in for low we haven't needed to go into crawl mode yet well that was exciting now this is some serious rock crawling as mentioned this trail is designed for Jeeps it's very rugged a lot of tall rocks a lot of big rocks and you could lose an oil pan easily so now we're gonna see what the Colorado could do with a Tacoma we had to use crawl control a couple of times worked like a charm I think the z71 there's gonna be up to the challenge now it's time to put the Colorado through the same test board for low you got it down in first gear I said this is a very aggressive trail well the angle of approach has not been the issue but now we are stuck maybe not without pretty exciting we took two stock trucks the Colorado Duramax z71 and the Tacoma with the TRD off-road package right out of the box and we took on this Jeep rated trail they did amazing these are great tires they both have the same tires the difference is that the Tacoma has 16 inch wheels versus 17 that's designed to give you more sidewall you know we did the sand test we needed crawl control we used it today but you know it's one of those features that's exclusive to the Tacoma and I think if you're gonna do serious offroading it's something you may want to consider but as the z71 showed you could still do a lot with its four-wheel drive system even though the Colorado was very impressive in the rock crawl test I just want to note we had to remove this air dam without it you would have only had about 17 degrees of angle of approach so this would have been trashed it would probably bent the the frame that it goes on another thing I want to note is we received our truck with about 4,500 miles you're supposed to replace this every five thousand it's about twelve dollars for this blue dev kit it's basically the diesel additive to help it break the particles as they're leaving the exhaust just something you should be aware of if you're gonna get a diesel you better stock up on this stuff well that concludes our series of tests with the Colorado and Tacoma two amazing trucks as you could see even though it's almost May it's snowing up here in Big Bear but we got our rock crawl test and that was very impressive though if you have to summarize what this test means here you go I think when it comes to heritage durability I have a little more confidence in the Tacoma they've been doing this a lot longer at the end of the day Toyota is a truck company that built its reputation on making small trucks and now medium and large trucks on the other hand chevy made big trucks that's really where they made the reputation and now they make this Colorado which is a wonderful truck but when it comes to this size I give the Tacoma a little bit of an edge thanks for watching we'll see you next time on the driver's seat

Channel: thedriversseat

Views: 717,187

Rating: 4.3007059 out of 5

Keywords: Ron Doron, Doron, TheDriversSeat, DriversSeat, Cars, Autos, Car Review, 0-60, Fast, Truck, SUV, Crossover, toyota, tacoma, toyota tacoma, trd, trd off-road, chevy, colorado, Z71, chevy colorado, colorado z71, duramax

Id: K1_1SQSfhcg

Length: 9min 35sec (575 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 03 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Dcrowz]

I started loosing count how many times he said "crawl control".

[u/SnakeDoctor00]

I love the Tacoma but this is horribly biased. Also the video is edited when the truck is just about to bottom out or scrape something on the rocks multiple times.