2024 Toyota 4Runner TRD Pro Last Drive: Sure, It’s Old—But It Ain’t Bad

The 4Runner is the oldest brand-new Toyota you can buy today, by far—at least until it's replaced later this year. Its ladder frame and powertrain trace back to 2004, when the now-two-generations-removed Tacoma it was mechanically related to first appeared. This fifth-gen 4Runner arrived in 2009, but if you don't look too closely at it or poke around its interior, you might not realize it's old enough for a learner's permit. Its live rear axle, separate body and frame, and obvious off-road focus are very much still in vogue, having been copied by the resurrected Ford Bronco, not to mention the newest Toyota Land Cruiserand Lexus GX SUVs. But damn, the 4Runner is ancient, and before its more modern replacement arrives, we took one last spin with a TRD Pro example for a proper send-off.

Since the 4Runner hasn't changed mechanically in forever, we've included test numbers from a 2017 4Runner TRD Pro below.

Clambering behind the 2024 Toyota 4Runner's large steering wheel feels like a throwback to one of those Presidential fitness exams you took in grade school. The move is a blend of the Sit and Reach and Partial Curl-Up, in that you instinctively grab at the wheel's rim with one hand, hold the door with the other, and heave yourself up to the high floor, shooting your legs straight out ahead of you as your butt hits the seat.

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Like other Toyota trucks of the era, the 4Runner places front-seat occupants low, near the floor, in a sports-car-style legs-out arrangement. For those who fit—the steering wheel doesn't telescope—it's a satisfying, if bizarre, seating position for an SUV: You're high up, but within the vehicle, you're low. If the next 4Runner is anything like the new Tacoma (which is nearly guaranteed), the seating position will rise and be more conventional.

By now, the 4Runner's smell will have hit you. It's not bad, but it is old—the 4Runner's new-car scent is from a different generation. It's all plastic and vinyl, glued and screwed together in ways that have since evolved at Toyota, resulting in a lot more nose stimulation than you get from the smells of a newer Toyota model. One whiff had this author's head spinning with memories of the family RAV4 from … 2006.

Buttons Push Our Buttons

The rest of the interior is a literal, not olfactory, nostalgia trip. Buttons are scattered this way and that, as if Toyota fired switchgear at the dashboard using a blunderbuss. More likely, buttons went where they could fit as new features materialized over the past 16 years. At least, we imagine that explains the steering wheel heater switch buried under the engine starter button, far from the heated-seat roller switches on the center console or the off-road traction control settings knob stuffed up in the overhead console alongside the emergency SOS call button and sunroof controls.

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There are honest-to-cheapness delete plates for switches the range-topping 4Runner TRD Pro doesn't have, and you engage the four-wheel-drive Hi and Lo gearing via a meaty lever positioned awkwardly behind the transmission's shift lever.

Age brings upsides, namely wisdom in the touchpoints. Remember, this SUV's design was finalized sometime around the advent of Apple's iPhone, making its cabin ergonomics a bridge to the pre-screentastic age where most things can be controlled with actual buttons, including the air conditioning. And those seat-heater roller switches? They stay at whatever setting you put them to, rather than defaulting to "off" when the ignition is cycled. Winter lasts longer than one morning, so we welcome switches that maintain their position until you change them—set it and forget it.

Cruise control functions are handled by Toyota's long-serving steering-column stalk, a well-damped little wand that is supremely easy to use, even without looking. It's served in nearly every Toyota model at one point or another since its introduction in 1989. The 4Runner is the last Toyota standing to use it, and almost assuredly the stalk will die when the new 4Runner arrives with steering-wheel-mounted buttons like every other Toyota today.

Drunken Dynamics to Lower Your Blood Pressure

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Shift the 2024 Toyota 4Runner's long shifter into drive, and there's a noticeable lurch as the torque converter loads up. The transmission sports a mere five forward speeds; that was so-so two decades ago and at least three gears shy of what's typical today. Full thrust from the 270-hp V-6, which makes its power way up high in the rev range, therefore requires a deeper-than-expected push of the gas pedal. The rest of the time, however, the lack of gear choices means fewer shifts; the six-cylinder engine mostly lopes along at lower revs, though hills and passing maneuvers necessitate one of those big gas-pedal stomps. Fuel economy is a topic best not discussed; in average driving, the Toyota barely managed double-digit mpg.

Ride motions are nautical, especially in the taller TRD Pro off-road model we drove here. The body sashays this way and that on its relatively short wheelbase, meaning sneezes on the gas or brake pedals result in heaving dive and squat. Things are a little more buttoned down than you'd expect when cornering, mostly thanks to the TRD Pro's firmer springs and dampers. Body lean and the tires' elevated roar on the outside wheels compete to alert you to the rapidly folding handling envelope, though you'll have slid across the flat front seat and hit the door panel or center console long before reaching the 4Runner's limits.

As a cruiser, though, the 2024 4Runner pleases. The way it gently bobs down the road is nicely old-school and trucky, encouraging you to slow down and just roll. Most bumps short of severe, choppy expansion joints or potholes are rounded off softly and quietly, and the structure feels heavy and solid. Wheeling the Toyota around town, at lower speeds, is therefore a sort of detox from modern vehicles and their digi-everything. It's easy to ignore the low-resolution screen stuffed between the tachometer and speedometer, and you can stick an elbow out over the low windowsill, while the low beltline and generous glass area make it easy to see out of the 4Runner. Lowering the tailgate's glass window (via a switch on the center console, nearly three feet from the rest of the window controls on the driver's door armrest) remains a satisfying novelty among today's SUVs.

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Higher speeds aren't as Zen, with crosswinds shoving the SUV around and those all-terrain tires (and the TRD Pro's sport exhaust) singing a louder song. But the ride remains decent, and there's plenty of space onboard for four people and their stuff, making it otherwise good for a road trip. With only two rows of seats, the 4Runner's cargo hold is massive and mostly rectilinear. Our test model came with the odd sliding cargo tray, which alleviates the need to lean over the rear bumper to reach things deeper in the cargo hold. It also alleviates this requirement by reducing the cargo hold's useful footprint, both longitudinally and height-wise, so it's an accessory we'd skip.

The 2024 Toyota 4Runner comes into its own off-road, where its stubby wheelbase, tall ground clearance, and rugged suspension help it clamber confidently over obstacles. The squishy brake pedal with a lot of top-of-stroke gain, a hindrance to on-road smoothness, and the long accelerator-pedal action are boons to finer wheel placement off-pavement. In any event, we've off-roaded 4Runners plenty over the years, including TRD Pros, so we'll leave its capability as a given. That isn't to say it can't improve; we suspect a fresh suspension layout, better clearance, and more modern traction-control aids will enhance the 4Runner's dirt-running skills while not compromising (or perhaps also improving) its on-road behavior.

To Buy or Wait?

"Charming" is an overused term to excuse or sugarcoat otherwise bad vehicles and their shortcomings, but it's apt here. The 4Runner is charming, gruff, and straightforward. It's a 4x4 that acts like one, while delivering a right-sized, roomy, two-row interior with an actual roof (take that, Jeep and Ford), a nimble footprint, and a refreshingly analog control interface. It looks cool with a roof rack, too, even if few buyers ever will climb the TRD Pro's tiny ladder to reach it. Oh, and there's no price you can put on the sense that this invincible-feeling 4Runner will outlive your kids, nuclear-war-grizzled cockroaches, and the concept of time itself. If you're eyeing a new SUV with an old-school flair, the 2024 Toyota 4Runner remains competitive, at least against roofless, less comfortable alternatives like the Wrangler and Bronco.

Where Toyota will take the next one remains a mystery, at least for the next little while, not least because the brand's showrooms are overflowing with similar product: The aforementioned 2024 Land Cruiser shares its platform and mechanicals with the newest Tacoma pickup—the same expected donor vehicle for the new 4Runner—and is a two-row SUV with arguably 4Runner-esque squared-off bodywork.

We figure the 2025 Toyota 4Runner will hold the line on pricing, keeping its $40,000-ish base MSRP as a wedge between it and the $55,000-ish-and-up Land Cruiser, while keeping the Jeep Wrangler and Ford Bronco as direct rivals. Toyota likely will pull this off by restricting the 4Runner to the new Tacoma's lower-output, non-hybrid turbo four-cylinder engines—the new Land Cruiser gets the Tacoma's more powerful hybrid option standard. Let's hope the traditional hood scoop, roll-down rear window, and pleasant truckiness carry forward to the new model to offset its expected increases in refinement, touchscreen use, and fuel economy. In the meantime, goodbye, fifth-generation 4Runner, you dirty old truck.

* Measured results from a mechanically identical 2017 Toyota 4Runner TRD Pro