2025 Toyota 4Runner Trailhunter and TRD Pro First Drive MotorTrend

Hi there, I'm Johnny Lieberman with Motor Trend here in surprisingly cold and windy, yet still sunny, San Diego, California. This is a 1985 Toyota 4Runner. And while I hate to admit how old I am, back when I was in high school, this is what we dreamed about. This was the car, if you lived in Southern California, that you just wanted. Why? It fit our lifestyle. You go to the desert, it just did it all. However, if you take a good look at it, it's kind of primitive, right? There's leaf springs at all four corners. You got to get out and lock your own hubs. And of course, you got to do that when you're stuck in mud. The rear window doesn't slide down because it's part of the top that pops off, it slides sideways. And if you look at it, it's just a pickup truck with a bent seat and a roll bar bolted into the back. Fast forward four decades to the all new 2025 sixth generation Toyota 4Runner. And I know what you're thinking, what's that snorkel doing there? That snorkel indicates to you that this is the latest, newest 4Runner trim. This is the Trail Hunter. This one is intended for overlanding. So forget about the top coming off. There's not even a sunroof because Toyota thinks you're going to put like a tent or a fridge or a satellite dish, whatever, up on the roof. It can hold 700 pounds, which that's pretty impressive. But the question is, is it really worth the money? That's what we're going to find out. Right now, we're on a pretty good off-road trail, actually. A little frame twist and stuff right here. And I've got to say, compared to the fifth generation, this is so much more capable. A little bit of a creep, but no big deal. I could have disconnected the sway bars. I could have locked the rear diff that doesn't have a front locker. Didn't need to. And it just went over it. Whereas I know for sure the old fifth gen, it really would have struggled right there, even in four-low, even with the locker locked. So they've done a much better job at making a piece of off-road machinery. So there is some bad news with the new 4Runner, and that's that it's a hybrid. There's also some good news, and that's that it's a hybrid. And here's what I mean. Horsepower is up by over 50. This thing makes 323 horsepower. But much more importantly, torque is up. I don't know. The old one made two, three, four torques. This one makes 465 pound-feet of torque, and it makes it at 1,700 RPM. That's real low. And why is that important? Well, when you're off-roading, you don't want to sit there and rev the engine to get torque. You want instant torque. And electricity has some real advantages off-road. That low-down torque is one of them. So at least with the Trailhunter version, you've got all kinds of cool off-road goodies. We've talked about the front sway bar disconnect. We've talked about the rear locker. I've got, like, you know, the yaw and angle indicators right here in the dash. Really cool off-road cameras. Not the greatest angle, but you can see exactly what the front wheels are doing, which is really nice. It's got all the Toyota off-road goodies. So if you hit the MTS button, those are your off-road modes, and you get the options of rock, mud, and sand. There's also auto. I've just left in auto because this is not the most challenging course on earth. It does a really good job of figuring everything out. Right now, we're headed up a dirt trail. We're about to hit some rocks and some kind of frame twisty type things, and it's just going to go over it. I mean, they've done a really good job on the new 4Runner of just, like, optimizing it for off-road. You've got hill descent control. Actually, the hill descent control is actually not called that. It's actually the crawl. So it's like off-road cruise control, and you use the dial itself to kind of select how quickly you want to go. You have five settings there. And again, and I've done a lot of off-roading in the old 4Runner, the fifth gen, and the TRD Pro model, well, at least this Trailhunter is much more capable than the old TRD Pro. One thing we haven't talked about is the price, and it's ballooned. There's no nice way to say it. Truck we're sitting in now, MSRP, and that means there's no destination charge in there. It's listed at, like, just under $67,000, probably a grand for destination. So it's going to be a $68,000 vehicle. The Toyota Land Cruiser, not to even mention other competition, the Land Cruiser can be had for, I think it starts at like $57,000, $58,000, and, you know, that's the same engine, but supposedly a Land Cruiser you would think would be, I don't know, more capable, more durable, more something for less money. So it's a bit of a head-scratcher. TRD Pro costs about the same. Yeah, the base truck is way down in the 40s, but still, cars are expensive in 2025. SUVs are more expensive, and turns out that 4Runners are even more expensive. So now we're going to go over just a big pile of rocks, and again, it's like nothing. It's just, like, doing it. A little hung up there, but it just has enough torque to just launch it over, and yeah, man, no problem whatsoever. This is a capable vehicle. So right here, I'm going to go ahead and disconnect the sway bar, not because I need to, just I want to check out the steering. I always find whenever you disconnect something or lock up anything, like, your steering changes. I just want to see, because I have a tight corner coming up, if there's any noticeable difference with the sway bar disconnected, and steering feels the same. I don't know what I'm talking about. However, you do feel more immediately a little bit more undulation. You'll also hear the beeping, and it is a Toyota, and it just beeps. They like to beep, and as far as I can tell, there is no way to turn that off, but more importantly, it just glides off-road. It's really easy. It takes the work out of it, which I don't know. Is that good? Is that bad? I think it's good. Some people will probably say, oh, I want to struggle. So sure, go ahead. Struggle. One thing we haven't talked about is the snorkel, which is standard on the Trailhunter, and it sounds ridiculous. If you have a turbocharged car, and you remove all the sound baffling from it, that's what it sounds like. It's just constantly like blow-offs, and as the turbo's catavating, and speeding up, and slowing down, and it's really hysterical. Be sure to put a mic on that right now. Do you need a snorkel? No, you don't, but hey, you know, if you have to escape a flood one day, you'll be glad it's there. It's a very much improved off-road vehicle. Again, just talking the Trailhunter here, compared to the old TRD Pro, but man, this is good on the trails. The price does sound high, but man, it's a very, very good truck. For about the same money, you could also get the TRD Pro, and supposedly, it can jump. So let's go check that one out right now. Now, we are running around in the TRD Pro version of the new 2025 Toyota 4Runner. What is the difference? From where I'm sitting, the exhaust sounds a lot beefier. Maybe it's the lack of that snorkel intake, and also there's a sunroof. About to pop up a big hill, four high, wow, literally no problem. There is electric torque. I've got my camera, no worries, no drama, no nothing. Wow, incredibly capable vehicle. Like the Trailhunter, it's on 33-inch Toyo Open Country 3. How good of a tire is that? I have them on my truck. Yeah, no problem whatsoever. This does feel a little bit sportier than the Trailhunter. I really do think it's that exhaust kind of getting more of a droney, sounds more guttural, more torquey, more powerful. Big difference between the two is the shocks. This is on Fox remote reservoir shocks, so you know, you can jump it, but it's more for like Baja running, open desert running, a little bit of a mini Raptor, if you will, and it just feels much quicker and sportier for some reason than the Trailhunter. I guess playing with shocks. Okay, I'm gonna tell the dude we're gonna jump. Okay, you call it, and I think we're good to go. Oh, hey, that was good. You're alive. So, you know, if you compare it to the last one, which again, that was, if you bought a 2024, that's a 15-year-old platform with a really old boat anchor, let's be fair, engine, and just kind of a dumb transmission. This feels so much more sporty. The platform is way more capable, way more power, but if you looked at the old 4Runners, they looked sporty, right? Especially the orange and green, kind of the official car of Los Angeles. They look great. They just were kind of dogs, whereas this one is not. It's real good. It's real capable. It's real fun, and it feels quick and sporty, and boy, I would like to maybe take the Trailhunter on this trail to see, because right now, if you said, take one home, it would be TRD Pro for me, but different trails, different trucks. That was a low-speed kind of rock crawly course. This is more of a little bit of a mini Baja course. That said, I like this TRD Pro. Plus, I think it looks a little cooler, too. At price, I guess it's just, you know, everything's expensive these days. Everything just got inflated. You know, the average price of a new car, I believe, in 2024 is over $48,000, so if you're putting $20,000 on top of that to get something as capable and, frankly, special as a 4Runner TRD Pro or even the Trailhunter, like, yeah, it's not the worst deal in the world. They've also done some cool stuff on the interior. They have four aux inputs standard, which is great. They put a light bar on there, which is super cool, and then you've got all the off-road goodies that you get on any other hardcore Toyota off-roader. So, again, and just to sound like a broken record, but, like, man, coming to me impressed by the capability, just the overall everything on these trucks, I think it's a massive improvement from the one that came before.