Toyota Tacoma Trail Edition Off-Road Review: Who Needs Skid Plates When You Have A Receiver Hitch?

Pretty self explanatory i feel like so lets just get right into the video Music. So some quick specs on the trail edition before we set off weve, got over nine inches of ground clearance. With the trail edition 16 inch wheels with two 65 millimeter tires wrapped around those wheels. You can see. You know not crazy off road tires, but theyre a little bit more on the aggressive side and actually has pretty good uh departure and approach angles. So uh thatll be pretty interesting to test it all out today and then. Finally, you guys probably wondering what mode im in with everything to start off so ive got everything off uh charge, control stability, control, all that fun stuff. You just have to hold the button down for a minute and then itll do that and then were gon na start off in two wheel drive four of the trails you might have to go into four wheel high. I doubt well have to use uh four below im just out here by myself. So im not gon na do anything too crazy, but thats all set up so lets set off im just trying to give some perspective to this hill. Before we go up, weve got the tacoma here and then you guys can see the hill, and this is all that were going up um, and so you can imagine its its a pretty large hill, and this is the stuff that we will be driving over this Uh size comparison with the old socks and sandals um, so theres, just quite a bit of rocky train, a lot of loose rock, and so this really uh tests out the tires of a vehicle so uh time to do this.

Uh hill climb – and i just made the dumbest rookie mistake for the first take. I had the parking brake up and i forgot to put it down and i was like: why is the truck not crawling forward duh um, but enjoy this uh one mile an hour driving two mile an hour driving as i go up this hill clench, my butt Cheeks hope that i dont uh pop a tire that is literally always my biggest concern is just uh. You know puncturing a tire here out in the middle of nowhere, because you know what happens if you get stranded out here. You get abducted by aliens, its utah people um, but yeah here in four wheel, low. It does a really good job, um, its just kind of scooting, up its pretty comfortable um, its not too lurchy feel a little bit of that. But i mean every vehicle when youre putting forward low kind of has that lurchiness a little bit? Oh every time i touch a rock im like. Is it gon na pop it? I got too much ptsd from the escalade in the trx, okay, doing pretty good. So far, and this up here gets a little bit uh more slippery. This is pretty its pretty surprising kind of floored a little bit here, because this is where we um start to get a little bit of loss of traction. Pre collision sensor unavailable clean sensor thanks dont think we need to worry about that right here too much and then this last part the tacoma trail doesnt have any like thing that shows this, but this last parts like 17 18 degrees, so its not incredibly steep by Any stretch of the imagination um, but you have like the steep part and then right after youve, got some rocks, so its uh, its not terrifying uh.

Something i do want to mention is the tacoma hood is kind of bulbous its kind of hard to see over the hood, so we are going to go down this little thing. Um and again, i feel like this would represent having to go through a little obstacle. If youre on a camping adventure – and i went too far – i kind of have this thing – memorized now ive gone through this with so many vehicles just want to make sure i do it right. So i go down this rung wow. Ah, there we go okay, there. We go okay, so a quick side note about that departure angle, its pretty good until you take into account the uh receiver, hitch and uh wait for it. The exhaust tip you guys, probably heard in the video a little scraping sound because it barely uh scraped. The receiver hitch a little bit on the bottom of the exhaust if nothings actually damaged just cosmetic and then you guys can see, were flexing here on the movement, and let me tell you its um, pretty interesting. Some of the things im seeing here on the trail edition now that i am up on this, i wanted to get on this to really see uh what it looks like uh up, close, so yeah im noticing the air dam is potentially gon na become an issue Once i actually go through the full uh movement, uh right there um again not over nine inches of ground clearance uh, but that if that air dam was gone, that would actually probably help out a little bit, because you guys can see the difference between that and The bumper and all that fun stuff and then the other thing thats pretty cool to see, is the flex here in the back.

Sorry about my shadow but yeah that looks pretty cool but uh wish me luck. Folks! Oh lets get over the last herculean task here with the tacoma trail, so you guys are wondering im going to be doing this uh two pedal style worried about that break over angle a little bit, oh, that, oh, my goodness, that was a little bit sketchy Music! Um ill see if it looks sketchy on the camera, but yeah i almost felt well ill, go see what it looks like on the camera, but it feels like i almost just fell back um but before i go check that and see how sketchy that actually was And maybe it wasnt anything at all im, just a little scaredy cat, tacoma trail audition, to sum things up: um relatively comfortable at uh higher speeds, especially considering this is an entry level off road truck Applause. I think it does a pretty good job. Tire grip is pretty good um. I would recommend getting more aggressive tires if youre gon na be serious about uh your camping trips and off roading. All that adventuring youre gon na be doing with the trail edition. The stock tires are good, but uh id recommend getting something a little bit more aggressive if youre gon na be, you know going out all the time um and then, aside from that, uh did a pretty good job crawling kind of discovered that uh. The departure angle is not all that great with the receiver hitch and exhaust tip um.

If you kind of did some things with that, that would help out quite a bit and then the other thing about this package that i need to emphasize is it doesnt have skid plates. I checked that before i went up that rock thing just in case and yeah, it doesnt have skid plates so thats. Another thing about this package um is that since you dont have skid plates, you got to keep that in mind that uh, you probably want to add those on after the fact – or you know, maybe gets a different package with the tacoma that has skid plates. You know, obviously like the trd pro for sure right that has skid plates, for example um, but overall pretty good. So we got to give it a final score and uh. What id have to say here with the uh tacoma trail edition, is uh compared to all the other vehicles ive taken off road concerning the price point and all that um im actually going to give its a pretty high score and eight and a half out of Ten, i feel like considering the price point and everything its really good. There are some things that i wish that this had of like skid plates, for example um, but other than that i mean 41 grand for the capability that this has, i think, its pretty solid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tO1BFACaVvk