2024 Toyota Tacoma Trailhunter First Test: Toyota’s Factory Overlanding Rig Just Needs a Driver

Because of legal red tape and language barriers, it seems like random strings of letters and numbers are the go-to for naming new vehicles—it’s just easier for most parties involved. So when we see actual words used in a vehicle’s name, it’s worth paying attention. Take the 2024 Toyota Tacoma Trailhunter, for example. “Trailhunter” is a lot more intriguing than “TRD,” “Off-Road,” or “Pro,” but we’ve come to understand what they all mean in the Toyota truck lineup. 

What is the Trailhunter, then? Is it an off-roader innocently hunting for trails? Is it hunting other trucks on the trail? After some quality time trying to drown and bury one in mud, it isn’t clear whether Jason Bourne or John Wick is a better comparison, but the answers are: It can probably just make its own trail, and the other trucks out there better watch their asses.

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What Makes a Trailhunter?

The obvious clue something is different about the 2024 Toyota Tacoma Trailhhunter compared to any other Tacoma is the high-mount air intake—intended to ingest cleaner air rather than being perfectly sealed to keep out water—running up the passenger-side A-pillar. Its sleek profile is reminiscent of the targeting display on Boba Fett’s helmet, but the Trailhunter would’ve escaped the Sarlacc much quicker. It’s the overland-ready grade in the Toyota Tacoma lineup, after all, and it’s equipped to get you and your gear nearly anywhere you want to go.

A set of 265/70R18 Goodyear Wrangler Territory R/T tires (nearly 33 inches) grip the surface below. Inflate or deflate the tires as needed with a bed-mounted air compressor, complete with a digital display for easy use. Old Man Emu 2.5-inch forged monotube shocks designed specifically for the 2024 Toyota Tacoma Trailhunter damp terrain inputs at each corner, with remote reservoirs in the rear. A multilink live axle with coil springs and an electronic locking differential handles articulation and traction duties in the rear. Forged aluminum control arms finished in bronze and debossed with “Trailhunter” are ready for some abuse up front. For even more wheel articulation, disconnect the front anti-roll bar electronically from inside the cab with the Stabilizer Disconnection Mechanism (SDM). The suspension is lifted 2.0 inches in the front and 1.5 inches in the rear.

The air intake isn’t the only component mounted for high clearance, but this one requires looking a lot lower: The exhaust dumps before the rear axle for better ground clearance after the axle, which the ARB steel rear bumper with integrated recovery hooks also helps (it’s shared with the Tacoma TRD Pro). The exhaust can seem like a small detail, but we would have needed to take a different driving line to climb up Mt. Magna at Holly Oaks ORV Park in Michigan had it run to the bumper.

But things will inevitably get bashed and bumped, so the standard Tacoma aluminum underbody protection is upgraded to stamped steel, installed to guard the front, transmission, and rear differential. Keeping the body and frame protected, the Tacoma Trailhunter has standard frame-mounted rock rails.

The 2024 Toyota Tacoma Trailhunter comes only as a double cab, but you can have it with a 5- or 6-foot bed—our tester came with the 5-foot bed. All new Tacoma Trailhunters come with the larger 12.3-inch digital gauge clusters and a 14.0-inch center screen. A head-up display, heated and cooled seats, and upgraded stereo with a removeable JBL FLEX portable Bluetooth speaker round out the notable interior options.

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Can You See Me Now?

Whether cruising under the night sky or setting up camp in the dark, the 2024 Toyota Tacoma Trailhunter has it covered. Trailhunter-specific LED headlights handle your day-to-day lighting needs. Between them, an LED light bar is centered in the bronze Toyota heritage grille (note the old-school “Toyota” font). Officially, the Trailhunter is rated for 35-inches of water fording but when we pushed that to 40 inches or more, the light bar was still visible above the wake trying to outrun the out-of-the-box overlander.

As you emerge from bodies of water, dust, or darkness, Rigid Industries LED fog lights keep things lit from down low. Switchable white and amber modes make them even more versatile. We liked the amber lights in water and the white lights for on-road driving and heavy dust; turn them on with the left multifunction steering-column stalk and change the color with the “fog” button to the left on the dash.

LED lighting continues into the bed: A roof-mounted light shines on cargo, and lights mounted in the center of the upper bedrails assist, as well. Could anyone possibly need more lights? Well, if you do, you can always stick a light bar up high on the standard sport bar mounted behind the cab. It even comes with removable Molle panels for mounting gear.

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Off Road

With enough flavors of Tacoma to rival a Baskin Robins, two are distinctly the most capable: the TRD Pro is the desert runner, competing with the likes of the Ford Ranger Raptor, and of course, the Trailhunter as the overland edition. The Trailhunter convinced us of its slower-speed crawling and trail-conquering abilities several times over, but the TRD Pro is the midsize Toyota pickup ready for some desert speed. We were impressed by the Trailhunter’s versatility when another grade is purpose-built for higher speed runs.

This feature is common across all Toyota off-road trucks and SUVs, including the Lexus GX550 on the shared TMNA-G platform, but that doesn’t mean we like it any less: Getting the Trailhunter prepped to ditch the pavement is done by entering the Multi-Terrain Select (MTS) or DAC/Crawl modes with the dial on the center console. There is a standard drive mode selection, but separating all the drive modes keeps selection by the driver deliberate and avoids unnecessarily long strings of features across the screen. Other useful items like camera display, anti-roll bar disconnect, and the differential lock buttons are all just as easy to access on the center console.

As useful as it is to have the truck tailor its transmission, throttle, and traction-control maps for specific surfaces like snow or sand, we didn’t find ourselves fiddling with them much. Although we did try them all out, the equipment speaks for itself. The Wrangler R/T tires found traction in water, sand, mud, and on smooth rocks. Especially with the anti-roll bar disconnected, wheel articulation at each corner is so extreme, we expected to see a tire pop straight through the fenders. But this extreme wheel tuck keeps corner weight over the wheels and the suspension loaded, improving traction and keeping the driver in a more neutral sitting position as a secondary benefit.

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The hybrid 2.4-liter turbocharged i-Force Max four-cylinder makes peak combined output figures of 326 hp and 465 lb-ft of torque, with 48 hp and 184 lb-ft coming from the electric motor. Taking a page from the same chapter we just covered, DAC/Crawl is a great feature, but it’s almost unnecessary. It will save you from having to ride the brakes on a steep decline, but the electric motor provides enough low-end torque that you can easily make fine throttle adjustments without fancy computer controls. The versatility is nice to have, but after doing our due diligence, we left the truck in Sand mode and just manipulated the mechanical features as needed.

As we drove around the off-road park, we couldn’t help but push the speed higher every chance we got once we realized how smooth the Tacoma Trailhunter was. Especially with factory-built trucks, it can be difficult to find a balance between slow-speed rock crawling and higher-speed sand or desert driving, and that can translate into harsh or soft road manners, as well. But the Trailhunter is an excellent middle ground. It had the grunt to cross water with its tires completely submerged and the finesse to inch up rocks while maintaining razor-thin ground clearances.

Because it has a hybrid powertrain, an impressive 2,400 watts of electricity is available in the bed. But what makes the Trailhunter a great overland rig isn’t the ability to brew fresh coffee or power a heater in the winter (or power several other accessories and tools) but rather its versatility in tackling any terrain it encounters. It’s overland after all, not just rocks or sand.

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On Road

Pavement, though, is also part of the land. In the concrete jungle, the 2024 Toyota Tacoma Trailhunter is as much at home as it is on an expedition. Credit in large part goes to the suspension and the bespoke Old Man Emu shocks. From 60 mph, the Trailhunter came to a halt in just 128 feet. As forgiving as the suspension and tires can be cruising through bumps and ruts, an emergency stop doesn’t impart a lot of front-end dive. The wheel still steers straight in this scenario, and drivers should feel confident during a panic stop. In normal driving, the brake pedal is soft with longish travel as is the case with most trucks on the road. In an emergency stop situation, the pedal seems to shorten its travel and becomes much stiffer.

The brakes heated up a lot after we performed a few of these stops, and we needed to let them cool down. You of course wouldn’t normally jam the brakes repeatedly, but if you’re maxing out the 6,000-pound tow rating or 1,709-pound payload, it’s worth noting your surroundings or using some engine braking and watching your speed on a steep decline. With its extra equipment and hybrid powertrain, it is a hefty midsize truck, coming in at 5,478 pounds. We didn’t experience any serious brake fade or other issues, but it’s worth knowing your rig’s limits.

The 2024 Toyota Tacoma Trailhunter isn’t the quickest truck on the road, needing 7.3 seconds to hit 60 mph. After 15.9 seconds, you’ll cross the quarter-mile mark at 84.0 mph. Maybe you expect better with the power and torque the i-Force Max offers, but it’s geared for off-road, and the tires aren’t exactly small. The take-off isn’t strong, but it’s clear the truck is purposely tuned this way. It puts the power down where it counts, and we assume the Trailhunter isn’t anyone’s first choice for street racing.

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Performance was consistent, but oddly enough, the shift strategy wasn’t. And there didn’t seem to be a rhyme or reason, in Sport mode or not. There’s a gear indicator with suggested gear on the driver display, and taking off in first, it would often suggest third. The transmission would touch second and then sometimes shift immediately to third. Shifts in any gear could happen below 5,000 rpm, or above it. We don’t know why it acted this way, but the bottom line is that the transmission certainly didn’t perform the same from run to run.

The manual-shift mode is interesting, though, and useful off road—the Tacoma Trailhunter will attempt to stay in whatever the last selected gear was. If you manually shift to third and come to a stop, the eight-speed automatic will shift until third gear, where it will stay until the driver manually shifts up or down or comes to a stop.

Around our figure-eight handling course, the Trailhunter barely edged in under the half-minute mark, completing its best lap in 29.6 seconds at a 0.55 g average. Around the skidpad, it averaged 0.71 g. With some time to cool off and shorter braking distances, the brakes held up better than we anticipated. Understeer is an annoyance, though, even for an off-road truck. However, truck engineers consider understeer to be safer than oversteer and it seems nearly impossible to kick the Trailhunter’s rear end loose. But in dirt and mud, it’s an absolute riot, and that’s where we want it, anyway. Even with some lift-off oversteer attempts, the rear wheels never got loose but the front end would start to turn back in. For a truck that can be loaded up heavy with gear, it handles the way it should.

Everything Comes at a Cost

The 2024 Toyota Trailhunter is available now and starts at $64,395. Our test-truck example only had a few options like a bed mat, extra tie-downs in the bed, a ball mount, and tailgate insert (colored letters) for an as-tested price of $64,934. Both the 2024 Chevrolet Colorado ZR2 Bison and 2024 Ford Ranger Raptor can be had for less, but their starting prices are all within $10,000. And consider that the Tacoma Trailhunter already has accessories like multi-colored foglights, a light bar, a sport bar with MOLLE panels, and an air compressor, and it might come out as the better bargain depending on your needs.