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The 2025 Toyota 4Runner is the Sixth era of the icon
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Each 2025 Toyota 4Runner has a turbo-4 beneath its hood
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The 2025 Toyota 4Runner prices between $42,265 and $68,350
The 2025 Toyota 4Runner has been dragged into the fashionable period like a toddler screaming and kicking on the mall. For the primary time in 14 years, the 4Runner is new.
The previous one was nonetheless going robust. Toyota bought 92,156 examples in 2024 and 119,238 in 2023. That’s regardless of the actual fact it was sufficiently old to have its bar mitzvah and develop chest hair. The brand new one? From the body to the powertrain and electronics, it’s new. This isn’t only a reskin. Nevertheless it’s not but clear how diehard consumers are going to adapt. Change is tough.
From a hybrid powertrain and extra muscular look to larger screens and much more compromised packaging, the outcry on social media has been swift. That’s earlier than addressing the ever rising matrix of a lineup, which now stands at a complicated 9 trim ranges. Welcome, Trailhunter.
After crawling round and blasting round on- and off-road, in many of the lineup, I’ve realized the brand new 4Runner drives higher, will get barely higher gas financial system, and has extra energy than its historical predecessor, whereas being simply as succesful off-road. That makes it a greater car, and disgruntled fans must get used to the change as this may inevitably be the 4Runner the world lives with for the following decade plus.
2025 Toyota 4Runner
2025 4Runner goes turbocharged and hybrid
The V-8’s lengthy gone, and now the naturally aspirated V-6 engine joins it within the historical past books. RIP. The mob on-line appears offended about this.
Each 2025 4Runner has a turbo-4 beneath its hood. The bottom engine, a 2.5-liter turbo-4 rated at 278 hp and 317 lb-ft of torque, will energy most 4Runners bought because it’s the one alternative for the bottom SR5 mannequin, which Toyota says represents about 51% of 4Runner gross sales. Torque comes on actual fast down low within the rev vary with peak torque arriving at 1,700 rpm. It’s straightforward to tear off the road and energy supply is easy, however a high-pitched turbo whoosh is ever-present.
Higher trim TRD-badged fashions like TRD Professional and Trailhunter, together with probably the most lux mannequin, the Platinum, come normal with the brand new hybrid powertrain dubbed i-Drive Max. Off-Highway, Off-Highway Premium, and Restricted fashions will be optioned with the hybrid system. It bolts a 64-hp motor powered by a 1.9-kwh battery pack into the transmission housing. Mixed system output checks in at a wholesome 326 hp and 465 lb-ft. That’s V-8-like, stump-pulling torque. Peak torque additionally is available in at 1,700 rpm, and it’s shockingly fast, for a 4Runner not less than. My butt dyno estimates the hybrid 4Runner may hit 60 mph from a cease in 6.0 seconds.
Each 4Runner now has a contemporary 8-speed automated transmission. It’s a pleasure, and is bsolutely as swift and easy because the ZF-sourced 8-speed in a Jeep Grand Cherokee. The 4Runner’s transmission cracks off shifts with ease, and the Sport and Sport+ modes cling onto gears longer for even higher energy. However don’t go on the lookout for paddle shifters in any 4Runner, together with the TRD Professional.
Full-time four-wheel drive is simply on the extra lux-oriented Restricted and Platinum fashions. In a relatively low-cost cop-out transfer, Toyota equips all the opposite 4Runners, together with the costliest TRD-badged off-road-oriented fashions with part-time four-wheel drive. Each four-wheel-drive 4Runner has a 2-speed switch case. The TRD Professional and Trailhunter fashions additionally web a rear locker and digital disconnecting entrance sway bar.
Gasoline financial system improves from yikes standing of 17 mpg mixed for the final mannequin—which wasn’t even attainable in the actual world—to a borderline respectable 23/24/23 mpg in hybrid type. The quantity SR5 with its turbo-4 knocks just a few mpgs off for 19/25/21 mpg with 4WD. Choosing rear-wheel drive provides 1 mpg throughout the board. In short on-road testing I noticed a median of 15.3 mpg on the freeway in a Trailhunter and 19.7 mpg in a Platinum. Each fashions had been hybrids.
2025 Toyota 4Runner
2025 Toyota 4Runner
How to decide on between the 4Runner TRD Professional and 4Runner Trailhunter
Patrons on the lookout for the highest of the 4Runner off-road foodchain now have a call to make because the Trailhunter joins the TRD Professional. At $68,350 (together with the $1,450 vacation spot cost), the 2 off-roaders value the identical and even have the identical off-road angles. It comes all the way down to how these 4Runners experience and are outfitted.
The essential off-road TRD Professional and Trailhunter angles:
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Departure angle: 24 levels
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Breakover angle: 24 levels
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Floor clearance: 10.1 inches
2025 Toyota 4Runner
Toyota provides the TRD Professional a set of three-way adjustable, 2.5-inch diameter Fox shocks with distant reservoirs for higher warmth dissipation. Trailhunters swap these Fox shocks for a set of two.5-inch solid ARB Outdated Man Emu shocks with exterior piggyback distant reservoirs. Each experience on 33-inch all-terrain rubber from the manufacturing facility, and nobody from Toyota may reply whether or not 35s would match with out rubbing.
The Trailhunter sports activities skid plates protecting each bit from the entrance bumper again to the behind the switch case. The TRD Professional solely has skid plates that cowl to the again of the engine.
The skid plate differentiation highlights the supposed use circumstances. The Trailhunters is designed to crawl over tough, rocky, slippery terrain, whereas the TRD Professional mannequin is designed to go rapidly over free terrain.
Every revealed its character rapidly each on and off-road. The TRD Professional is about as much as experience a lot firmer with shocks which are tuned to take impacts at velocity. The Trailhunter swings to the opposite finish of the spectrum with shocks that includes a delicate tune. The Trailhunter rides the softest of the lineup, and reveals probably the most physique roll on the road and whereas slowly traversing over tough terrain. The digital disconnecting entrance sway bar turns out to be useful in deep ruts, enabling the impartial entrance suspension to drop farther.
2025 Toyota 4Runner
The TRD Professional feels higher tuned than its Tacoma TRD Professional counterpart. The shock tuning saved the 4Runner TRD Professional extra planted, extra settled, and general much less jittery. However after one lap on a considerably tame “high-speed” off-road course, the 4Runner TRD Professional’s brakes smelled and a warning popped up within the gauge cluster noting the transmission oil temp was sizzling and that the car ought to cease in a secure place.
2025 Toyota 4Runner
The surround-view digital camera system additionally comes up quick. In a Ford Raptor in Baja mode, the system will stay on at velocity, displaying the terrain forward. That’s not the case within the new 4Runner. The forward-facing digital camera turns off inside seconds of dashing up after an impediment. Even within the MTS off-road modes. That is infuriating whereas making an attempt to repeatedly activate the system whereas at velocity to make sure you can see the decrease terrain forward. Ford will get it proper. Toyota doesn’t.
The hybrid’s immense torque is a boon off-road, however the throttle tuning leaves one thing to be desired with a hair-trigger tip-in response that may break traction, even when the motive force is trying to feather the throttle to climb a hill. The throttle and brakes aren’t progressive, which makes it exhausting to be easy. The Trailhunter’s pillar-mounted snorkel consumption accentuates the turbo whoosh to the purpose of being comical and annoying.
Each 4Runner is quieter inside on the freeway than the comparable Land Cruiser, which shares the 4Runner’s powertrain and platform, due to a much less upright windshield.
2025 Toyota 4Runner
4Runner will get muscular and tech stacked
The Sixth-gen 4Runner didn’t skip leg day. Or arm day. Toyota made certain this SUV is ripped. It seems like a Transformer actively making an attempt to morph. The sheetmetal ripples with muscle mass from the bulging fenders to the faux hood scoop on the TRD Professional. That hood scoop looks as if it’s taped on, and it shakes to no finish whereas off-roading at velocity. The entrance grilles of the TRD Professional and Trailhunter get the LED driving lights from the identical fashions within the Tacoma lineup with the identical 10,000-lumen score. That’s double the output of the weak lightbar on the full-size Sequoia and Tundra TRD Professional, which at 5,000 lumens has a decrease output than an $80 flashlight. I didn’t get to check the lighting in the dead of night so judgement day comes later.
2025 Toyota 4Runner
The general form and stance of the 4Runner hasn’t modified. The design’s evolutionary, at greatest, however the additional muscle mass won’t be to everybody’s liking. Toyota made an enormous deal concerning the throwback rear facet home windows that wrap over the roofline as a nod to the first-gen 4Runner. They’re a cool throwback, however opinions appear to fluctuate. Fortunately, the tailgate glass nonetheless powers down into the tailgate to haul longer objects or simply to extend recent air within the cabin.
2025 Toyota 4Runner
2025 Toyota 4Runner
Inside, the 4Runner evolves to be tech-filled. The exhausting plastic dashboard now sports activities an 8.0-inch touchscreen with a big plastic bezel in lower-rent SR5, TRD Sport, and TRD Off-Highway fashions. That bezel is a painful reminder that you just didn’t select a dearer mannequin. The dearer fashions have a hulking 14.0-inch touchscreen straight out of the considerably wider Sequoia hanging off the upright dashboard. It looks as if overkill. An ordinary 7.0-inch digital gauge cluster solely makes an look within the base SR5 mannequin, whereas each different 4Runner will get a 12.3-inch digital cluster that shares its design with different latest Toyotas. A minimum of there are exhausting buttons and knobs for the local weather and audio controls.
Anybody hoping the 4Runner TRD Professional would sport the flamboyant entrance seats with built-in shock absorbers from the Tacoma TRD Professional might be disillusioned. Toyota spokespeople stated the Tacoma is a “me truck,” whereas the 4Runner is a “we truck.” These neat-looking entrance seats within the Tacoma eat all of the rear legroom, so that they don’t make an look within the 4Runner. However the TRD Professional 4Runner nonetheless requires the selection of camo-patterned black or pink leather-based, which is sort of the life alternative. Like within the Tacoma, “TOYOTA” is stamped throughout the passenger facet of the dashboard within the TRD Professional and Trailhunter fashions, and may’t be eliminated. It’s a three-piece molding and a part of the trim itself.
Packaging and supplies high quality appear to be an actual difficulty with the 4Runner, similar to its Land Cruiser sibling. Shut the doorways and it feels like a skinny, hole, tin can. Taking place the freeway your complete hood flexes within the wind. Decrease-spec trims have low-cost exhausting plastic on the door uppers, and even in increased trim fashions the soft-touch materials on the door uppers simply covers extra exhausting plastic. It’s the identical story for the soft-touch door-mounted armrests and heart armrest, each of which permit elbows to sink into the exhausting plastic in seconds. The middle console deal with wiggles, and the roof-mounted seize deal with on the passenger facet felt prefer it may rip off if used to get into the 4Runner.
2025 Toyota 4Runner
2025 Toyota 4Runner
2025 Toyota 4Runner
Highway journeys won’t be terribly snug within the 4Runner, and that will doubly so for these seated in again. Anybody discovering themselves within the entrance passenger seat of the SR5, TRD Off-Highway, or TRD Sport fashions will be aware the dearth of lumbar changes. Passengers in again will discover no room for toes and even toes beneath the entrance seats. The second-row seat bottoms are low, flat, and mounted above the rear axle. A tiny, barely existent, third row is an possibility on the bottom SR5 and Restricted fashions. It’s probably not liveable, and it’s not provided on the bigger Land Cruiser, which signifies its lack of usefulness right here. The cargo space of hybrids induces a better liftover top as a result of the load ground is raised to accommodate the battery pack. To make sure Toyota can declare there’s a flat load ground a plastic compartment beneath a canopy is put in close to the tailgate, like GM did on the last-gen Tahoe and Yukons. One of these packaging ought to make an engineer unhappy.
2025 Toyota 4Runner
The 2025 Toyota 4Runner presents worth equation
The 2025 Toyota 4Runner begins at $42,265 together with a $1,450 vacation spot cost, however that’s for a base rear-wheel-drive mannequin. Tack on one other $2,000 for four-wheel drive, which is nearly a given. That’s the amount mannequin, based on Toyota. A lux Platinum prices $64,310, whereas the TRD Professional and Trailhunter fashions value a wince-inducing $68,350.
The 4Runner carves out its personal territory amongst its competitors. The Ford Bronco and Jeep Wrangler are priced proper on prime of your complete 4Runner lineup, however these are louder, cruder SUVs with a extra outlined function that compromises livability. Plus, their doorways and roofs come off. The Jeep Grand Cherokee undercuts the 4Runner at $38,290 to start out, however the Trailhawk off-road mannequin, which has a plug-in hybrid powertrain, prices a TRD-like $67,980. It’s additionally not as targeted on off-roading because the 4Runner.
The 4Runner SR5 makes probably the most monetary sense as, in comparison with the TRD Professional or Trailhunter fashions, consumers could have greater than $20,000 left of their budgets to switch their autos with aftermarket elements relatively than choosing the TRD-badged fashions. However factory-integration and a manufacturing facility guarantee are understandably fascinating.
Ultimately the most recent 4Runner is healthier than the outgoing mannequin. It stays to be seen if prospects must be dragged kicking and screaming to sellers to purchase one or if they are going to be prepared to simply accept a lot of new expertise in a car that was beloved for its old-school attraction.
Toyota paid for journey, lodging, and all of the mud in my hair and ears so Motor Authority may carry you this check drive assessment
