FIRST DRIVE： Toyota 4Runner – Better Than A Land Cruiser？

That, as I'm sure you know, is the new Toyota Land Cruiser. It's become a bit of a hero car for Top Gear recently. It's won our award. It's a proper no-nonsense 4x4. There's even a waiting list for it in the UK. And yet, out here in the US, that is $60,000. This, the Toyota 4Runner, is $40,000. Don't think that this is some sort of pretender because both of these cars are built in the same factory, by the same people, on the same platform. They use the same engine, the same gearbox. So why is it such a bargain? And why do we get that one, but not this one? In this video, I thought we'd explore that. We're going to drive both of them. We're going to spend a lot of time with them, have a good poke around, see what's what. I'm also going to catch a hideous cold and try not to die. The first thing anyone who knows anything about 4Runners is thinking is that's a TRD Sport, that's the wrong one, you should have got a Trailhunter. The big butch one with the gnarly bumpers, the knobbly tyres, the trick suspension, and the cheap baiting attitude. But there is method in our mumsy madness. So we rang up Toyota and said, this 4Runner that we don't get, which one do you actually sell the most of? And it turns out that 30%, a third of people who buy 4Runners buy this model, which is like 48 grand, $48,000. And as for the Trailhunter? 3%. 3% of the sales are that one. According to Toyota's official and incredibly deep customer research, a 4Runner buyer is younger than a Land Cruiser fan. They care less about the badge's history and the heritage. And a Land Cruiser buyer is a little bit older, lives near some off-road trails and is crucially a lot more likely to ever take their truck off-road. A quarter of people who buy a 4Runner don't even spec four-wheel drive. The man from Toyota said, yeah, often this is a soccer mum car. Now there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. There's absolutely nothing wrong with wanting a big sturdy car to take your kids to school in, something super versatile, loads of space. But it's kind of funny because, yeah, I'd expected this thing to be this sort of gnarly trail conqueror. And actually, most of the time people are just using it as a shopping car. So why even offer the choice? Why not just sell a knockdown price Land Cruiser for people who don't care so much about overlanding? And then Toyota would only need to go to the trouble of making one car. Again, a lot of research has gone into this. And the scariest stat of all is that as recently as 2017, 4x4s and SUVs made up 60% of Toyota's US sales. All the sedans and hatchbacks together was only 40%. Fast forward to 2025 and it's predicted that SUVs and trucks are going to be 80% of Toyota's sales. And less than a fifth of its output will actually be car shaped. I was told numbers like 16 million truck sales versus less than 3 million sedans. But the company still wants to offer the same amount of choice between models as it used to in the days of the sedan and the hatchback. Hence why there are a lot of truck models. But, you know, this is based on a Tacoma. It's got a body on frame chassis, but it doesn't feel horribly truck like to drive. Sort of straddles that line between being an SUV 4x4 and being a kind of unkillable truck. And look at this, you know, I'm on a not particularly smooth road right now. I've got one hand on the wheel and it's not jiggling around like certain pickup trucks, certain leaf sprung pickup trucks would do. It's nice. I drove this from New York out here to Pennsylvania in one hit and I had no fatigue even though I felt like death warmed up. It wasn't difficult to drive and it didn't beep and bong at me like European stuff. I'd have bought it just for that. Problems? Well, the engine is thrashy and sluggish and customers aren't happy it's only a four cylinder. One owner I talked to said Toyota could pry his older V6 model from his cold dead hands. The fake cheese grater vent in the bonnet or the hood if you prefer is a bit much. The roof bars create more wind noise than opening the windows entirely and the rear doors are too small so you always wipe dirt on your legs when you're climbing out. But I liked the 4Runner. How refreshing to not be in a pretentious car stuffed with annoying technology. And now for its big brother. Okay, so life in the Land Cruiser. You'd expect this to feel night and day more sophisticated, wouldn't you? This starts at $60,000. This starts where the top end 4Runners kind of tail off and it does in a lot of ways but there is some stuff I didn't expect the Land Cruiser to trip up on. Stuff like the engine, okay. Now in the UK and in Europe we only get this car with a 2.8 litre turbo diesel and it's industrial and it's agricultural and it comes close to spoiling the car really. I thought that coming to the US and trying it with the iForce Max, which sounds like, I don't know, a kind of SWAT team run by Tim Apple, that this would solve that. This would be the powertrain the car had always deserved, blah, blah, blah. But really, kind of no. It's still quite rough and there's noticeably more vibration through the bulkhead, through the firewall between the engine room, if you like, down there and you in here, than there is in the 4Runner. Feels like that should be the other way around. I mean, look, I'm in this cabin with soft touch materials, a nice leather steering wheel, all this brown leather and contrast stitching and a very soft and supple seat. Lots and lots of subtle touches telegraphing to me that I'm in a more premium, upmarket, grown-up kind of car. But the engine doesn't seem to have got the memo and particularly when it's cold, it is rough as a badger's arse. Definitely more spacious than the 4Runner though. And engine grumbles aside, it's a lot more refined and rides with more maturity and more composure. What you're getting here then is, well, more two cars in one. I was just about to go on praising the Land Cruiser for its grown-up interior when... Look, buttons for heated and cooled seats, buttons for climate control, but you get a lot of this with sophistication. You get bonging. That one's telling me to look where I'm going, but I was looking at the controls over here. I wasn't even looking at the camera, so shut up. Then you get all this cabins down here as well. I've got locking centre diff, locking rear diff. I've got my disconnectable stabiliser bar, which just gives you that massively more axle articulation, real serious off-roading stuff. I've got something called DAC crawl. I've got something called MTS. Shut up. I've got multiple drive modes down here on a different selector. And then of course, I've got my high range and my low range four-wheel drive. So yeah, this is coming fully kitted out with buttons that I guess were all blanks in the 4Runner because it wasn't the top spec car. And I know that you can make a 4Runner go just as far as one of these off-road. But like I was saying, the difference is that Toyota says most people just don't bother. The very, very small niche audience that do, but actually it's Land Cruiser owners who are much more likely to live within 30 miles of off-road trails, who are much more likely to take their car off-road. They're also crucially, which is weird given this is more expensive, Land Cruiser owners are statistically a lot more likely to modify their car to make it even gnarlier off-road. Couldn't have thought that, would you? You'd have thought you'd buy the kind of cheaper base car and then rip it to bits and add the accessories. But no, in the States, this is the one that people buy to get muddy, to get dirty, to get stuck, to get winched out, and then to go and do it all again next weekend. I like it though. I like it up here. Like the slightly Lexus-ified more luxury interior, but doesn't feel difficult to operate. I like that I have that sense of adventure that I do in a Land Rover Defender, but with none of the it's going to break down any minute anxiety. So, are we missing out by not getting the 4Runner in the UK? I'd love to say yes, but in truth, anyone who wants a boxy family SUV that'll never off-road over here can just buy a RAV4, which is a bit smaller, has a chance of fitting into one of our parking spaces, and is a lot more refined than the 4Runner. Tell you what though, a couple of days driving around in something that didn't bong, didn't flash up driving hints and tips, and just left me alone to meander through the wilderness, proved all over again that even humdrum cars can be brilliant when they just get on with being great at the simple stuff.