2024 Toyota Land Cruiser vs. Ford Bronco Sasquatch vs. Jeep Wrangler Rubicon 4xe Comparison Test: Weekend Warriors!

When we review a new factory off-roader, we take it seriously. We have trails local to our California headquarters that are perfect for pushing the limits of what the best stock vehicles can do, and we use them not only to provide readers a baseline before they start ordering parts but also to arbitrate which is the greatest factory offering of them all.

This time, though, the usual procedure risked both repeating ourselves and crawling right into a foregone conclusion, so we took a different tack. Rather than push the 2024 Ford Bronco Badlands Sasquatch, 2024 Jeep Wrangler 4XE Rubicon X, and 2024 Toyota Land Cruiser First Edition to their limits in a rock garden, we went camping.

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Not Your Father’s Camping Trip

Not like national park camping, mind you. We left pavement 16.6 miles and more than 6,000 vertical feet in our rearview before reaching our dispersed camping site on the side of the trail near its terminus. On the way, we blasted down dirt roads, splashed through a creek, and crawled over rocks big enough to put these SUVs’ skidplates to work. The goal? Find the best weekend warrior, the rig you can take the family boondock camping right off the showroom floor without spending your next several paychecks on overlanding gear.

Why not name the ultimate rock crawler? Well, we already did. We’ve compared multiple versions of the Bronco and Wrangler and found them to be two sides of the same coin in most cases (though the Bronco R and Wrangler 392 are fairly different in purpose and breadth of capability). We know a Wrangler Rubicon X will go farther off-road than a Bronco Sasquatch thanks to its tires and factory winch. Meanwhile, a quick look at the spec sheet will tell you the Land Cruiser, which has never been about hardcore crawling from the factory, stands zero chance of keeping up with the other two in a rock-bashing competition.

Coyote Flats is an old favorite of ours and many others from Southern California. Nearly 300 miles north of L.A., it sits at more than 10,500 feet of elevation in the eastern Sierra Nevada. Getting up there from the 4,400-foot elevation at the trailhead requires more than 16.5 miles of steep trail littered with big rocks, deep ruts from winter rains, and large holes from previous visitors who chose throttle over finesse. It’ll test your underbody protection, but it’s just tame enough the family will enjoy it. The payoff is scenery easily mistaken for Switzerland and the knowledge you won’t see any AWD crossovers up here challenging your sense of accomplishment.

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Meet the Competitors

Five hours each way on the highway makes it absolutely clear the all-new Land Cruiser is the one you want to commute in. Although all three are old-school body-on-frame SUVs with at least one live axle underneath, the Land Cruiser is far more carlike than the other two. With a real, permanent roof, it’s the quietest inside by a long shot. From the ride quality to the steering to its resistance to crosswinds, it’s the best road-tripper of the trio, hands down. Plus, it has best-in-test EPA-rated fuel economy and range, even if real-world efficiency was terrible for all three.

Of course, that comes with trade-offs. You can’t take off the doors or roof, so you’ll have no open-air fun like the other two provide. It also has the least ground clearance at 8.7 inches, the worst approach, breakover, and departure angles at 31/25/22 degrees, and by far the least aggressive tires. It’s more pleasant to drive on the road and easier for the kids to get into, but it works the hardest off-road. At least the Toyota can say it stops the shortest from 60 mph at 117 feet to the Ford’s 135 and the Jeep’s 136, though our test crew found emergency braking in the Toyota to be a “wild ride.”

The Bronco and Wrangler, as we said, are two interpretations of the same vehicle. Ford’s version comes out ahead of the Jeep in the road-trip test mostly because an independent front suspension prevents the rig from wandering like the Wrangler with its front live axle. It also has the most cargo room of the three and feels the most spacious inside, but the numbers say the Toyota is just as roomy for people. Plus, the Ford has the best overall off-road specs with 11.5 inches of ground clearance (thanks to those massive 35-inch tires) to the Wrangler’s 10.8, the second-best approach angle at 42.3 degrees to the Jeep’s 43.8, the best breakover angle at 29.0 degrees to the Jeep’s 22.5, and the best departure angle at 37.0 degrees to the Jeep’s 36.8.

The Wrangler, at least, can claim all-around performance superiority. With 375 hp and 470 lb-ft combined from its plug-in hybrid turbocharged four-cylinder powertrain, it’s the most powerful of the group. The Toyota is a close second with 326 hp and 465 lb-ft from its hybridized turbo-four, while the Bronco makes do with 315 hp and 410 lb-ft from its twin-turbo V-6.

On the street, it means the Wrangler is also the quickest, hitting 60 mph in 5.6 seconds to the Bronco’s 8.0 and the Land Cruiser’s 8.4. Somehow, it also hangs on the tightest in corners, pulling 0.74 average lateral g to the Ford’s 0.69 and the Toyota’s 0.68. Same story in our figure-eight test, with the Wrangler managing a 28.8-second lap at 0.62 g average compared to 29.1 seconds at 0.55 average g for the Bronco and 29.7 seconds at 0.55 g average for the Land Cruiser. Despite its slow lap, our test team found the Ford the most fun to drive.

Off-road, the Wrangler hits back with the best tires, proper all-terrain BF Goodrich K02s that out-grip the Bronco’s Goodyear Territory MT hybrid mud/all-terrains in dry dirt, as well as a factory-installed winch.

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Trail Trials and Tribulations

Many sideways glances and unflattering words made the rounds as we aired down the Toyota’s tires. Its Michelin LTX Trails look like street tires, and many predictions were made about cut sidewalls and missing grip. Sure, the Land Cruiser has full-time four-wheel drive with low range plus a locking rear differential and an electronically disconnecting front anti-roll bar, but the hardware can only do so much if the tires can't get a grip.

We’d eat those ugly words. Not only did the Land Cruiser go everywhere the other two went, but it also didn’t lose a single tire doing it. (Neither did the others.) What it did do was work its skidplates and rock rails hardest, owing entirely to its lesser clearance. It also gave its traction control more to do, but it went over or through every obstacle despite not having a locking front differential like the other two. If any of these three were to get stuck, we were all betting on the Toyota—and we’d have all lost our shirts.

As in our previous tests, the Wrangler and Bronco proved to be equally at home on the trail. Rather than choosing lines carefully as we did in the Toyota, we were intentionally picking the dumbest lines we could without risking body damage, just to see if we could get them stuck. Neither flinched.

We did, however, notice some key differences. For one, the Bronco tosses around its occupants less. The Jeep’s live axles allow for a ton of articulation, but they also keep everyone in the vehicle swaying all over the place. On the other hand, we all appreciated the Jeep’s plug-in hybrid powertrain, which allowed us to crawl for miles with the gas engine off and listen instead to the sounds of nature, not to mention what the tires were doing on challenging obstacles.

Although the Bronco was louder on the trail, it was also quicker. Between its superior ground clearance and shocks that seem to get better the faster you drive, the Bronco easily ran away from the other two on less challenging sections.

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A Disconnect Disconnect

The Ford was also quicker because its electronically disconnecting front anti-roll bar stays unlocked at higher speeds than the other two, even if only by a few miles per hour. We kept all of them unlocked as much as possible to improve ride quality, and doing so exposed a Toyota weakness. While it’s equipped with almost all of the same hardware as the other two, the software governing Toyota’s off-road parts belies a lack of thought compared to the Detroit twins.

When you exceed the maximum unlocked speed for the Land Cruiser’s anti-roll bar, it locks back up, but unlike the others, it doesn’t automatically unlock when you slow back down. It has a forward-facing camera to help you see over the hood, but it automatically turns off at a much lower speed than do the other rigs’. These are nice-to-have features, not deal-breakers, but they convey the impression Ford and Jeep engineers spent more time off-road thinking about how to make their vehicles work better for the driver than Toyota’s.

Then there’s the matter of engaging off-road modes in the first place. Here again the Toyota struggled with software getting in the way of the physical controls. Rather than cycle through all drive modes, the knob on the dash only does on- or off-road modes depending on whether you push a separate button first. It’s an unnecessary extra step and easy for beginners to overlook. Once you’re in those modes, you’re still on your own to decide when to use lockers and disconnect the anti-roll bar, which is fine but assumes you know what you’re doing.

On the other end of the spectrum, the Bronco is point-and-shoot simple. Keep turning the drive mode knob until the graphics on the screen match what’s out the windshield. It chooses whether to engage lockers, drop into low range, and disconnect the anti-roll bar for you. Don’t like Ford’s recommendations? The buttons are right on the top of the dash in your sightline so you can customize, though that’s also an extra step if you’re an experienced off-roader, and some drive modes won’t let you change every setting without kicking you into a different mode.

If you don’t want the vehicle doing anything for you, just get the Jeep. There’s one off-road mode, and it’s either on or off. You decide when to lock axles or disconnect the anti-roll bar. Hell, you have to yank a lever back manually to shift the transfer case and put it in four-wheel drive and four low. It’s all on you, and that’s fine with our crew of longtime dirt heads, but it assumes a lot of knowledge and experience up front. Our big wish is the controls would be somewhere easier to find when you’re all crossed up, like the Ford’s are.

It's not a fully dumb car, though. Being a plug-in hybrid, the Jeep has other drive modes controlled by buttons on the opposite side of the steering wheel. There, you can choose when and how the gas engine runs versus the electric motor. Hybrid mode works fine most of the time, but we liked using the “e-save” mode to charge up the battery when it got low on the trail so we could go back to quiet crawling.

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The Cost Question

If you haven’t shopped for one lately, we regret to inform you factory off-roaders—like pickup trucks—have gotten very, very expensive. All the more reason you might not want to hit the double-black diamond trails while you’re still making payments. After all, the cheapest rig in this test is the Bronco, and it still costs a cool $69,150 as tested.

It only gets worse from there. The Land Cruiser only comes in two models, and this is the one with all the toys and off-road tools. It rings in at an even cringier $76,825, but it’s got nothing on the Jeep. The original go-anywhere vehicle doesn’t come with a free winch or Power Box to run your campsite off the hybrid battery—those things cost money. All told, this one came in just shy of $80,000 at $79,045.

The View From 10,000 Feet

Chalk it up to our years of experience with Broncos and Wranglers, but the standout surprise in this comparison was the Land Cruiser, which punched way above its spec sheet. Yeah, we had to choose our lines carefully, and we heard and felt steel meet stone more often, but it went everywhere the other two went and barely broke a sweat. Still, we wouldn’t turn down a lift and simpler controls.

The Ford and Jeep performed exactly as we expected them to, and in doing so they bookended the Toyota. Because we were just trying to have a nice weekend out on the trail and not conquer King of the Hammers, the Wrangler’s ultimate off-road capability didn’t come into play, whereas its lower levels of comfort, higher price, and lesser practicality did, including an inability to carry as much stuff as the other two. The Bronco, on the other hand, gave us everything we wanted for the least amount of money: space for people and things, off-road ride quality that doesn’t bang them up as much, and more than enough capability to tackle the kind of trails appropriate for when there are kids in the back. You’ll get where you’re going in any of these rigs, but the one wearing he Blue Oval is our pick.

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3rd Place: 2024 Jeep Wrangler 4xe Rubicon X

Verdict: Still our benchmark off-roader but best for experienced wheelers prepared to spend a lot on cargo and other accessories.

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2nd Place: 2024 Toyota Land Cruiser First Edition

Verdict: The legend returns as good as ever but lacking the full off-road capability of the best factory crawlers.

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1st Place: 2024 Ford Bronco Badlands Sasquatch

Verdict: Drive off the lot, pack your gear, load the family, and head for the wilderness without giving it another thought or mod.