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Driving the Toyota 4Runner
Sep. 22nd, 2021 04:14 pmOn our trip to Washington's Olympic Peninsula a few weeks ago our rental car was a Toyota 4Runner. We didn't reserve an SUV but it was what the rental agency had when we arrived Thursday night— either an SUV, or a pickup truck, or a large van. We chose the SUV. We even put it through a few gentle offroad paces, driving miles of dirt road to get to Murmut Falls, Mt. Walker, and Obstruction Point. I'm confident I could've done all these drives with an ordinary passenger car like I'd reserved, but having a capable SUV removed any shadow of doubt.
Driving a 4Runner hundreds of miles over the long weekend was interesting as I've comparison-shopped the 4Runner twice. The first time I bought a Jeep Cherokee; the second, the Nissan Xterra we still own & drive at over 100,000 miles. Obviously the 4Runner fell short of first choice a few times. But that was based on book-knowledge coupled with test drives. What different perspectives would I gain on a longer test drive of 4 days and 400+ miles?
Here are Five Things:
1) It's big. The first thing I noticed as I drove the 4Runner is its size. No, it's not the largest SUV out there, not by a long shot! But it has slightly outgrown its traditional spot in the mid-size SUV category. Climbing into and out of the seats really is like a climb. You'll use the grab-handles mounted above the door frames, and you'll get pissed that those running boards are positioned in a way that's counterproductive for actually stepping in or out.
On the road it feels bigger than its actual size. It feels wobbly. Unwieldy. The engine is overtaxed with too much mass to come up to speed quickly, and the vehicle's mass and high center of gravity make it feel risky to change direction quickly. The first leg of driving I was happy to stick to around 55-60mph on the freeway.
The room inside was way more than the two of us needed. It's rated for up to 7 passengers. That's a marketing gimmick, though. It's actually not that big. If you really need 7 passenger capacity, you need a bigger vehicle than the 4Runner.
2) The dashboard layout is a stylistic wreck. In a car with a well designed interior, the dashboard is well organized with a consistent look and feel and a sense of flow. The modern 4Runner's dashboard looks like it was designed by 3 different people thinking 3 entirely different things and not cooperating. That's due in part to the age of the vehicle. The 2021 4Runner is part of the generation launched in 2009 for model year 2010. Yes, this 2021 4Runner is a 12 year old design! So as not to let the vehicle get too outdated designers have gone back a few times to "refresh" the design. They've changed the looks and added things like the LCD screen. Individually these all function fine but their look makes them seem slapped together from spare parts.
3) Capable off-road. I didn't a test drive to know the 4Runner is great when the pavement ends. It's one of very few body-on-frame SUVs left anymore (our Xterra is another) and has always been highly regarded for its 4x4 capabilities. What impressed me on our 3 dirt-road forays was how smoothly it traversed washboard ruts. I think our Xterra would have given us a jarring ride. The 4Runner's suspension mostly soaked it up.
4) Surprisingly good fuel economy. The EPA figures for the 4Runner are 17 mpg combined (16 city/19 highway). Yes, these are low overall but totally believable for a vehicle this size with a 4.0-liter V6 engine and five-speed automatic transmission. What surprised me, though, was that our 4Runner overachieved these figures. We hit 20mpg overall with 21-22mph on highway stretches. That's even better than our Xterra, which also has a 4.0-liter V6 engine with a 5-speed automatic transmission and is slightly smaller/lighter. Toyota engineers have apparently done some nice refinement on this older drivetrain.
5) Comfortable, dependable... but expensive. One thing you can't gauge from reading specs and reviews or going on test drives is how livable a car is. We found the 4Runner was easy to get accustomed to. It's big and wobbly... but I got used to the size after the first hour of driving. It's slow to accelerate... but this isn't a car you drive for its zip. Yeah, the dashboard is a design disaster... but you can get over that. While these might sound like a lot of tradeoffs, the fact is the car becomes comfortable quickly. It does what it's supposed to do and doesn't make a lot of noise about it. Does that mean I wish I'd bought one? Enh, no. It's still expensive. It's bigger than we need and doesn't really seem to provide much more value. That was our conclusion after test-driving one years ago, too. We bought our Xterra for around $30,000 instead of a 4Runner for $45,000.
Driving a 4Runner hundreds of miles over the long weekend was interesting as I've comparison-shopped the 4Runner twice. The first time I bought a Jeep Cherokee; the second, the Nissan Xterra we still own & drive at over 100,000 miles. Obviously the 4Runner fell short of first choice a few times. But that was based on book-knowledge coupled with test drives. What different perspectives would I gain on a longer test drive of 4 days and 400+ miles?
Here are Five Things:
1) It's big. The first thing I noticed as I drove the 4Runner is its size. No, it's not the largest SUV out there, not by a long shot! But it has slightly outgrown its traditional spot in the mid-size SUV category. Climbing into and out of the seats really is like a climb. You'll use the grab-handles mounted above the door frames, and you'll get pissed that those running boards are positioned in a way that's counterproductive for actually stepping in or out.
On the road it feels bigger than its actual size. It feels wobbly. Unwieldy. The engine is overtaxed with too much mass to come up to speed quickly, and the vehicle's mass and high center of gravity make it feel risky to change direction quickly. The first leg of driving I was happy to stick to around 55-60mph on the freeway. The room inside was way more than the two of us needed. It's rated for up to 7 passengers. That's a marketing gimmick, though. It's actually not that big. If you really need 7 passenger capacity, you need a bigger vehicle than the 4Runner.
2) The dashboard layout is a stylistic wreck. In a car with a well designed interior, the dashboard is well organized with a consistent look and feel and a sense of flow. The modern 4Runner's dashboard looks like it was designed by 3 different people thinking 3 entirely different things and not cooperating. That's due in part to the age of the vehicle. The 2021 4Runner is part of the generation launched in 2009 for model year 2010. Yes, this 2021 4Runner is a 12 year old design! So as not to let the vehicle get too outdated designers have gone back a few times to "refresh" the design. They've changed the looks and added things like the LCD screen. Individually these all function fine but their look makes them seem slapped together from spare parts.
3) Capable off-road. I didn't a test drive to know the 4Runner is great when the pavement ends. It's one of very few body-on-frame SUVs left anymore (our Xterra is another) and has always been highly regarded for its 4x4 capabilities. What impressed me on our 3 dirt-road forays was how smoothly it traversed washboard ruts. I think our Xterra would have given us a jarring ride. The 4Runner's suspension mostly soaked it up.
4) Surprisingly good fuel economy. The EPA figures for the 4Runner are 17 mpg combined (16 city/19 highway). Yes, these are low overall but totally believable for a vehicle this size with a 4.0-liter V6 engine and five-speed automatic transmission. What surprised me, though, was that our 4Runner overachieved these figures. We hit 20mpg overall with 21-22mph on highway stretches. That's even better than our Xterra, which also has a 4.0-liter V6 engine with a 5-speed automatic transmission and is slightly smaller/lighter. Toyota engineers have apparently done some nice refinement on this older drivetrain.
5) Comfortable, dependable... but expensive. One thing you can't gauge from reading specs and reviews or going on test drives is how livable a car is. We found the 4Runner was easy to get accustomed to. It's big and wobbly... but I got used to the size after the first hour of driving. It's slow to accelerate... but this isn't a car you drive for its zip. Yeah, the dashboard is a design disaster... but you can get over that. While these might sound like a lot of tradeoffs, the fact is the car becomes comfortable quickly. It does what it's supposed to do and doesn't make a lot of noise about it. Does that mean I wish I'd bought one? Enh, no. It's still expensive. It's bigger than we need and doesn't really seem to provide much more value. That was our conclusion after test-driving one years ago, too. We bought our Xterra for around $30,000 instead of a 4Runner for $45,000.
