2025 Toyota 4Runner First Drive: All The Trims, All The Money, All The Confusion

To most eyes, the 2025 Toyota 4Runner looks at least somewhat recognizable. The angular exterior–from the double Hulk Hogan mustache up front, to the bolder fender flares and familiar rear quarter window–all hark back to earlier generations. The rear window even still rolls down, in classic 4Runner fashion! And yet, each detail upped the 4Runner's aggressive ante for the sixth generation.

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The interior received an even more substantial overhaul, though, and the powertrain goes hybrid for the first time, including for the new top-spec Trailhunter package. Each of those updates falls right in line with the Tacoma that debuted last year, to equally great anticipation. But Toyota's recent drive program showing off the new 4Runner to media in San Diego, featuring not quite every last one of the nine total trim levels available, simply failed to satisfactorily answer the biggest question mark of all: an absolutely baffling price structure.

First, my journalist brethren and I needed to escape San Diego proper to find some terrain more appropriate for testing the 4Runner, so Toyota gave me the keys to a TRD Off-Road—for some strictly on-road driving. In reality, though that decision made sense given the disappointing factory tire choice that reminded me of the Land Cruiser debut just about 18 months ago now. 

More importantly, the highway miles afforded me a chance to experience the non-hybrid turbocharged inline-four engine paired to an eight-speed automatic, rather than the six-speed manual transmission that left me so disappointed on the Tacoma.

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The torquey four-banger doesn't rev too high, and the manual Taco's gear ratios make less than zero sense. But with two additional gear ratios to play with, at least the 4Runner stays right in the rev range for optimal delivery of every last lb-ft, managing smoother shifts and getting up to highway speeds with ease despite the 33-inch Michelin LTX Trail tires (which Michelin's own website calls a "car tire").

Southeast of SD, we transitioned onto some long sections of canyon roads where the 4Runner's respectable weight management produced minimal body roll, or at least the kind of reduced truck-like characteristics that we've come to expect from body-on-frame vehicles in the modern era. Big sway bars, no doubt, on this 4Runner TRD Off-Road, even if they don't disconnect as on the Tacoma TRD Off-Road.

I also reacquainted quickly with the modern interior design, highlighted by a panoramic 14-inch touchscreen on higher trims. The size of the touchscreen just about maxes out sheer square-inch necessity, though the lack of actual features and information makes so much surface area somewhat unnecessary. Customers simply demand bigger screens these days, so Toyota needed to acquiesce.

Familiar, beefy old switchgear carried over, nicely integrated into the dash with mostly intuitive layouts. My sensitive back and old man's knees, at 6'1" with long limbs, fit just fine until I asked a tall passenger to get comfy in the back seat, when a weird sharp plastic piece hit me square on the right kneecap in my ideal driving position. Clearly, the ergonomic upgrades only went so far.

Once outside of the city, we pulled in as a caravan to Vogt Ranch, the same off-roading course where Toyota launched the Tacoma last year. I purposefully rushed over to a TRD Pro for a rip around a graded track, up some steep obstacles, and over a large prepared jump. Keeping the truck in 4-High, against a Toyota rep's admonitions, I wanted to better experience the i-Force Max hybrid's prodigious low-end delivery, but going up one of the steepest berms I quickly discovered some traction control intervention that only stopped when I began to power brake up and over the crest.

Needing to power brake in a truck with 465 lb-ft of torque available at just 1,700 RPM certainly came as a surprise, but then again we never aired the Toyo Open Country A/T III tires down from street pressures (don't ask me why, even though I asked why repeatedly). Part of that little bit of slip-and-slide no doubt occurred because the hybrid system contributes to a curb weight of 5,455 pounds, or 505 pounds more than a gas-only TRD Off-Road. But when we flew over the jump, built perfectly for a 32 mph flightpath, the landing proved surprisingly uneventful despite the added poundage.

Instead, after a brief microsecond of lurch in my stomach, the manually adjustable 2.5-inch Fox Q3S shock dampers simply absorbed the compression all the way down to the bump stops without creating the kind of crunching or rapid declaration that so often feels so damaging to big, heavy vehicles. Would the same hold true in the new Trailhunter?

Available on the 4Runner in almost the same spec as the Tacoma, Trailhunter now tops the lineup—while adding another 100 pounds or so of accessories to the TRD Pro. Instead of Fox dampers, the Trailhunter uses a host of ARB and Old Man Emu parts (quintessential among SUV overlanders), plus a roof rack and an aggressive, futuristic snorkel to feed the air box.

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I laughed a little bit the first time I heard the diminutive inline-four wheezing in through the snorkel, which admittedly allows a bit more turbo whine to creep out of the engine bay, too. The Trailhunter path that Toyota set up included no jumping opportunity, but rather prioritized slower-speed obstacles that the overlanding crowd might more regularly experience. 

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Here, I relented to switching into 4-Low, and disconnected the sway bar to allow for a bit more articulation over some moderate elephant tracks and a larger rocky creek crossing (albeit bereft of water in this firestorm of a California winter).

Again, the engine and hybrid assist and eight-speed gearbox all got the job done, and I finally noticed a bit more electric grunt as the transmission shifted more frequently in 4-Low. Toyota opted against paddle shifters, instead sticking with a BMW Tiptronic-style shift pattern for the gear selector, with the downshift toward the rear. The engine braking put me off going downhill, though, since the hybrid and gas engines seemed to work counter to each other. Only later, I realized that I never tried the hill descent control programming (though in reality, I've only met one I ever liked, surprisingly on the Ineos Grenadier).

On the Trailhunter path, typical Toyota (and Lexus) safety alert chiming paired with the 4Runner's increasingly square, enormous hood to create some frustration. I wanted to keep the front-view camera running to help with visibility, but whenever the proximity sensors noticed a bush or rock or spotter, the camera angle changed—and usually at the worst possible moment. As usual, the dinging can turn off, but also automatically turns back on with every power cycle. Blame NHTSA perhaps, but a 4-Low or off-road mode priority here would make a big difference.

I also took the TRD Off-Road out for a lap, again with those disappointing tires fully inflated. This time around essentially demonstrated the base capabilities of the 4Runner chassis, in 4-High without the rear differential locked, no disconnecting sway bar, and no hybrid assist. More simply what the mechanical systems alone can manage.

And in fairness, the 4Runner got the job done! Never quite refined or particularly impressive, and almost certainly a little oversprung even on this smooth course, the truck simply chugged along happily. I began to wonder how my back might feel after a few hours of chop on a longer trail, but as a plus, the seats never seemed uncomfortable as I jumped between so many different trucks on so many different experiences throughout the day.

Of course, that interior probably marks the single most significant upgrade that Toyota needed to make for the 2025 4Runner to attract a modern buyer. The big touchscreen and digital gauge cluster both make sense. Less so the strange third-row cupholders that stick around even in trucks without the third row—and don't tell me they're for sleeping in the back, since the second row only folds up, not flat.

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The last portion of the day's festivities came in the form of a surprise on-road drive in a Limited trim. This less off-roady 4Runner package caters more to the city slicker who might occasionally go on a hike, or a weekend camping trip, or up to the ski slopes. But it's still a body-on-frame truck, beneath everything, and I struggled to recognize whether the Adaptive Variable Suspension actually made a difference. The Limited should, theoretically, count more for the heart of 4Runner sales, yet sells with full-time four-wheel drive and still priced above $60,000.

In reality, despite the fun driving day out at Vogt Ranch and the surrounding SoCal terrain, the 4Runner price structure and gradewalk became the theme of the day. And all the moreso because Toyota also brought out a Land Cruiser equipped with legit Open Country A/T III tires— rather than the ridiculous Dunlop Grandtreks I witnessed with incredulity at the Salt Lake City debut event—and then let me drive the Land Cruiser back-to-back with a Trailhunter.

Both come with the hybrid powertrain only, a disconnecting sway bar, and rear lockers, yet the Land Cruiser's much more comfortable seats, additional headroom, and more supple suspension tuning combines to create a much more enjoyable ride. Neither comes with a third row of seats, due to the hybrid battery pack, and the Land Cruiser somehow costs 10% less.

Then there's the elephant in the room—or, I suppose, at the ranch—the Lexus GX. Better looking than both the Land Cruiser and 4Runner, standard with an excellent twin-turbocharged V6 engine and a larger gas tank, plus an interior that redefines functional luxury, a base GX actually costs less than a 4Runner TRD Pro or a Trailhunter. Throw on some nice tires and a few accessories, and you still save money. Or just go with the GX 550 Overtrail package, which costs only $1,000 more than a TRD Pro or Trailhunter, and truly makes justifying a top-spec 4Runner impossible.

I've had to use the word "but" a total of 12 times so far in this single first drive story, given the sheer quantity of qualifying statements that the 4Runner unfortunately makes necessary. But other than diehard 4Runner fans, really, anyone who tests these three trucks back-to-back (-to-back) will almost certainly jump for the GX, then the Land Cruiser next, and lastly the 4Runner. All while wondering why a base 4Runner costs nearly 25% more than a base Tacoma.

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Then we must consider the case of buying the cheapest 4Runner possible and diving headlong down the modification rabbit hole. But (once more) that math rarely, if ever, adds up rationally either. And so everyone on hand at Vogt Ranch spent the drive back to San Diego pondering the true quandary, trying to wrap our collective heads around how such a baffling strategy on the part of Toyota and Lexus played out over these past 18 months.