The Toyota Land Cruiser, 4Runner, and Tacoma have been adventure-driving exemplars for decades, but the current gen of each is still fairly new. Ol’ reliable V8s and V6s have been dumped for turbo fours and hybrid systems; screens have replaced analog dials. But the off-road capability is still there, as we learned on a unique expedition wheeling all three trucks together on Moab’s famous slickrock.
I’ve officially lost count of how many times I’ve been to Moab. And I’ll tell you what, shoot me another invite and I’ll wing right back out there tomorrow. Watery beer and overpriced motel rooms aside, the driving experiences are uniquely epic thanks to the place’s alien-looking topography.
Precarious paths over giant fins of stone crisscross the region surrounding the town’s trinket store and restaurant street. The FunTreks Moab guidebook (my personal favorite area reference) lists 90 vehicle trails of various difficulty. And it’s not just the quantity of routes or mind-blowing viewpoints some of them can take you to that make this place great for wheeling—the terrain itself is exceptionally truck-friendly.
“Slickrock” is so-named for how ancient horse-drawn wagons experienced it. At least, according to the guidebook I just mentioned. Old wagon wheels clattered and skidded across it, creating a lot of trouble for the area’s earliest vehicular traversers. But on modern tires, it’s the opposite. Unless you hit a pocket of loose sediment or get caught in rare rain, slickrock provides a surplus of traction to today’s polymer tires, making it possible to drive up and down ridiculously steep piles of rock.
That brings us to our task: Getting a convoy of stock 2025 Tacomas, 4Runners, and Land Cruisers out-and-back on about half of the trail known as Hell’s Revenge. FunTreks rates this run as “difficult.” Having done it a few times myself, I would call it more of a hard-moderate (unless you hit all the extra-credit extreme obstacles like Hell’s Gate, then it’s really scary). A lot of the challenge is mental—you have to scale a few fins at the beginning that are so steep and skinny it’s easy to get rattled and wonder why you’re putting yourself through so much stress. Otherwise, you just have a few shelves and some really uneven rock sections. Slow and steady wins the day (unless you’re in a UTV, which pretty much just tramples its way over everything).
For trucks and SUVs, the bigger your tires, the easier this kind of driving is. Stock Toyotas, even the off-roady ones, don’t have much surplus of ground clearance because they still need to maintain a semblance of practicality and fuel economy. Getting them through this type of trail requires patience, careful line selection, and frequent peeks at the front camera view on the screen.
Since plenty’s already been written about these vehicles in the context of full reviews, I’ll do my best to focus on the strengths, weaknesses, and comparisons that made themselves apparent on the trail.
Tacoma
Our convoy had a Trailhunter, TRD Pro, and TRD Off-Road in the mix—all three survived the journey unscathed. The Off-Road is the lightest but least powerful and minimally accessorized; it runs modest 31.6-inch all-terrain tires and a 2.4-liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine. The Pro and Trailhunter are both much more expensive, more powerful, and heavier, running Toyota’s i-Force Max hybrid system.
While the Pro is a little more dialed for higher-speed desert driving with big-diameter shocks, and the Trailhunter’s more for camping with its raft of accessories, both have slightly taller, more aggressive (32.6-inch) tires and significantly more underbody armoring. On this trip, I had the Trailhunter model for a bit.
Highlights
The low-end torque on this thing is bountiful, making light work of heavy climbs. The gigantic infotainment screen, which I find pretty annoying in normal driving, becomes quite helpful coming over blind crests in camera mode. Low-range engages effortlessly. The main gauge display can be configured to report a lot of useful information (various temps, tire pressures).
The previously mentioned underbody armor, which we looked at in a video last summer, provides pretty comprehensive protection against rocks.
The vehicle conceals its length surprisingly well. Cameras and a responsive console shifter make it pretty painless to do a many-point turn in a tight space. We did still have a few trailer-hitch scraping moments on steep drops, though. Gotta watch out for those in a stock vehicle!
Weak Spots
Ride quality is just OK, even at very low speeds. Building an off-road camping pickup truck to OEM standards is tough because it’s got to be able to operate in a huge range of conditions at a large variety of weights. And frankly, it’s not possible to be all things to everyone—practically, it still rides a little rough with nothing in the bed, as most pickup trucks do.
I know I just got done praising the cameras, but it’d be even better if the hood weren’t so proud that you actually need cameras to see over it.
The gauge cluster dwells on a decorative graphic for so many excruciating seconds when you change drive modes—it’s deeply annoying and distracting.
Payload capacity is only about 1,100 pounds. Put four grown men in the cab and you’ve likely used more than 60 percent of that. So what are you going to carry in the bed? And if only two people are riding, why do all these trucks need four doors? This is the corner the Trailhunter’s painted into by being a hybrid, with a family-sized cab and a tank’s allotment of armor. (The Pentagon Wars comes to mind.)
4Runner
The finally-new-for-2025 4Runner is now totally homogenized with the Tacoma. It has basically the same trim levels, powerplants, and styling. I understand why Toyota did this—less variation means lower construction costs—but it kind of bums me out. And while I’m sold on this face for the new Tacoma, I kind of prefer the look of the fifth-gen 4Runner over this new one.
The 4Runner is a little shorter and even heavier than the equivalent Tacoma. In the context of rock crawling, both of those things turned out to be advantageous. The 4Runner Trailhunter I drove felt smoother over bumps; the suspension just seemed happier. The shorter wheelbase also made it slightly easier to scramble over things.
Highlights
Good ride, it was easy to keep track of where the tires are, and I even felt like I had better traction than I did in the Tacoma, especially on downhills.
That retractable rear window is still a delight. Yeah, dust occasionally blows in. But when you’re underway, it gives you a lot of the breeze-benefit of a convertible without the sun beating down on your head.
Power felt pretty much the same from the pickup to the SUV.
Weak Spots
Rear-seat access sucks. It’s hard to get into even if you’re limber, and the back seat’s pretty cramped once you’re in there.
The price tag on these is a little heartbreaking. Even the bargain-basement non-hybrid 4Runner is in the $50,000 neighborhood if you want heated seats.
I wish it had more of its own personality and look, or at least some more fun gimmicks to make it stand out. A full-sized retractable fabric roof like Wranglers have would be amazing, if it could be made to work reliably.
Land Cruiser
The Toyota Land Cruiser has been the default off-road 4×4 in many parts of the world for decades, sold in a zillion configurations with just as many different powertrains. In the U.S., it’s mostly been venerated by old money and off-road nerds. American-spec Crusiers have really only been available as gasoline-powered four-doors. Recent models were V8 only, the new one runs the same 2.4-liter turbo four-cylinder i-Force Max hybrid as the other two trucks we just discussed.
Right now, it only comes in two trims: the 1958 model with round headlights, and the nameless trim with square ones. We drove the latter in Moab.
Bizarrely, Toyota doesn’t offer an off-road-focused trim level like Trailhunter or TRD Pro. You can spec an OEM skid plate package for $805, but the thing doesn’t even ship with all-terrain tires. It weighs about the same as a 4Runner and has the exact same wheelbase. The Land Cruiser is about two inches taller and two inches longer than a 4Runner, but interestingly feels a lot broader from behind the wheel.
Highlights
The seating position and dashboard design give the driver of a Land Cruiser more of a commanding view than you get in the other trucks. The measurements tell me this doesn’t make sense, but you came here to learn about what the specs won’t tell you—and based on vibes, the Cruiser somehow feels more premium even than a more-expensive 4Runner variant.
The ‘Runner and Taco have a tactical cockpit feel to their interiors, while the Cruiser is friendlier and more refined. I dare even say … classier. The camera display resolution seemed higher, too.
To my surprise, the road tires didn’t really give us much trouble. They suffered in the short sections of soft sand and were quick to spin on loose stuff, but as far as walking up slickrock, they had no issues at all.
Weak Spots
On its own, the new Cruiser is quite a nice medium-sized SUV. But it’s not really an evolution of the outgoing model. As far as real capability goes, it’s a downgrade. The last-gen Land Cruiser you could buy in America, the V8 200 Series, felt much more robust and powerful (and it was, in pretty much every sense).
The Lexus GX, which shares a lot with this new Cruiser, does a better job standing out as unique with its improved styling and more prem’o interior appointments. In Toyota guise, it just kind of feels like a station wagon-ified 4Runner.
Takeaways
Moab is often associated with Jeeps—that brand is certainly well represented out there, and Jeep brings a fleet of extreme off-road concepts to the town annually. But most of the traffic we ran into, by far, were side-by-sides.
It felt a little funny tip-toeing along in shiny $70,000 trucks while little buggies buzzed around us, coming and going. Then again, you can’t drive one of those straight from a Denver driveway to the end of a trail in Utah.
Speaking of which, the end of the trail, really, is where these new Toyotas shine the most. They need to be driven much more slowly and carefully over obstacles than an old Jeep does, but the power and traction aids will look after you if you just know where to point the wheels. And the journey will be nice, with climate-controlled seats and steering wheels. Arrive at a campsite refreshed and with plenty of power outlets ready to rock and roll.
Today’s Toyota trucks pretty much do what ’90s Land Rovers promised—providing a refined experience in rugged arenas. If you just want to hit the trail, an old SR5 base model with good tires will get the job done. If you want the full arsenal of toys straight off the showroom floor, a new Trailhunter is the ticket.
Personally, I’d probably be looking at a TRD Off-Road trim 4Runner which lists at about $50,000. That’s a full $10,000 more than the base SR5, but considerably cheaper than the TRD Pro or Trailhunter (both of which ring up at around $70,000). The TRD Off-Road doesn’t get you the full loadout of cool accessories, but it has a good raft of meaningful upgrades over the SR5 like nice wheels and bigger tires, Bilstein remote reservoir shocks, and some off-road specific traction aids.
TRD Off-Road models don’t have the high-horsepower i-Force Max hybrid powertrain, but it still gets better fuel economy than a V6 fifth-gen 4Runner. And since you need to step up to the $47,000 TRD Sport just to get heated seats, the TRD Off-Road looks like the best value for money to me.
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