2025 Toyota 4Runner Trailhunter First Drive: Making the Case For Exploration

It feels crazy to think COVID lockdowns began nearly five years ago. How time flies when you’re miserable, isolated, and alone. But food shortages and social distancing weren’t a total waste. Many of us learned to bake sourdough bread, drink an entire bottle of whiskey in two nights, move to Austin, Texas, and perhaps most random of all, fall in love with overlanding.

That’s right, overlanding. You know, when you outfit your truck, SUV, or van as if it’s a house and go camping. Or, as our friends at Expedition Overland describe it, embarking on “self-reliant adventure travel to remote destinations where the journey is the primary goal.” Americans fell so hard for sleeping in rooftop tents, using chemical toilets, and taking cold outdoor showers that even the mighty Toyota Motor Corporation has seen fit to aim one of the nine trim levels on the all-new 2025 4Runner at overlanding enthusiasts. Meet the Trailhunter.

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What Makes the 4Runner Trailhunter Different?

Mechanically speaking, the Trailhunter is most closely related to the excellent new 4Runner TRD Pro. Pricewise, they’re the same; both are the most expensive sixth-generation Toyota 4Runner SUVs you can buy, starting at a sky-high-for-a-4Runner $68,350. A Toyota Land Cruiser can be had for approximately $10,000 less. In terms of powertrain, the two are nearly identical, with one tiny difference. Both feature Toyota’s hybrid 2.4-liter turbo I-4 powerplant that makes an incredible 465 lb-ft of torque at just 1,700 rpm. The TRD Pro, as well as any other 4Runner that uses the i-Force Max engine, produces 326 horsepower. The Trailhunter? Just 323 horses due to the factory snorkel. That’s 1 percent if you’re worried about the loss. Both SUVs get a modern, great-shifting eight-speed automatic transmission.

Like the TRD Pro, the 4Runner Trailhunter rolls on fat 33-inch Toyo Open Country III tires, which are quiet and comfy on-road and fantastic in terms of off-pavement capability. The two share a 3.2-inch-wider track compared to the base model 4Runner SR5 and a 1.5-inch front/2.0-inch rear lift. Both are quite serious, capable dirt-loving machines.

The big difference is the dampers. The TRD Pro features Ford Raptor–style Fox shocks great for jumping/Baja-style shenanigans and high-speed desert running. The Trailhunter has a set of Old Man Emu dampers designed for overlanding. Never heard of Old Man Emu? No worries, mate, as the Australian company is a bit obscure. However, OME has been around since 1976 and was acquired by legendary off-road upfitter/outfitter ARB back in the ’90s. These dampers come from the factory set up for overlanding, which means a softer ride for long-distance travel as well as the ability to carry a lot more weight than a standard off-road setup.

Unlike most of the other 4Runners, a sunroof is not available on the Trailhunter. The idea is that because you’re going to be living on the roof in a pop-up tent, who wants to walk on glass? Instead, the Trailhunter has a large roof rack designed by ARB to support 700 pounds of static weight. The sad part is that you might actually have to put your gear up on the roof, because like in all hybrid 4Runners, the battery raises the rear cargo floor by about 4 inches, cutting down on cargo space. Also, like in all sixth-generation 4Runners, the rear seats do not fold completely flat.

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What’s the 4Runner Trailhunter Like to Drive?

In a word, great. Even though there was no previous-generation 4Runner Trailhunter, we’re intimately familiar with the last TRD Pro, a yeoman of an off-roader. Capable by dint of its ground clearance and approach/departure angles, it got you where you needed to go, but it struggled while doing so. In the new model, Toyota turned us loose on a private ranch playground with some moderately difficult trails. For the first real obstacle, a tricky uphill frame twister (a frame twister articulates one wheel of an axle up and the other all the way down; the toughest ones articulate both axles in opposite directions), the ground team told us the Trailhunter needed to be in 4-Lo to make it up and over the obstacle. Thinking back one generation, yes, absolutely; the fifth-generation 4Runner would have needed 4-Lo, its locking rear differential, and a running start. With the Trailhunter we surreptitiously shifted into 4-Hi, and although it took two attempts, we torqued our way over the frame twister and on to the next obstacle. We ran it again in 4-Lo, and the Trailhunter barely flinched.

On a subsequent go-round in 4-Lo, we locked the rear diff (the 4Runner’s only factory locker) and even disconnected the front anti-roll bar. The obstacle ceased to be one. But never mind the trick gizmos. The larger point is Toyota has endowed the 4Runner Trailhunter with some serious default off-road chops. Activating all the goodies (such as the standard Multi-Terrain Select off-road modes) just adds to the capability. It’s S tier, as the YouTuber kids are so fond of saying. In fact, there wasn’t a single other obstacle on the course that caused the Trailhunter to break a sweat. To find out exactly how capable it is, we’ll need to take a 4Runner Trailhunter to some of the toughest trails we know. In the meantime, the difference between the old TRD Pro and the Trailhunter are massive; this Toyota moves up a class or three.

The Trailhunter is also much better on-road than any factory 4Runner ever. The fine-riding Toyo tires help, but here we see what the fuss is with Old Man Emu dampers. No 4Runner has ever been accused of being sporty, and although that’s still a stretch, on a winding back road we found ourselves smiling at how well this 2.5-ton bruiser drove. More important, the engine’s big torque output is just what the 4Runner has always needed. As Bob Lutz himself so sagely said, Americans buy horsepower but drive torque. The Trailhunter gets off the line with ease and up to freeway speeds with authority, which you could never say about the old one. The rear seats are even livable for large adults. Color us impressed.

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The Word on the 4Runner Trailhunter

It’s an exciting time to be an off-road enthusiast. Major automakers, including Ford, GM, and Toyota, are scouring the aftermarket for the best go-anywhere parts and offering them to enthusiasts from the factory. There’s a price tag for such convenience, of course, and in the case of the nearly $70,000 4Runner Trailhunter, it’s a steep one.

One could argue that if overlanding is a buyer’s primary use case, they should get the new 4Runner SR5 without the hybrid powertrain for $42,220 then spend about $3K on a set of Old Man Emu shocks, another $2K on better tires and a roof rack, and do all the work themselves. They'd have a good rig while saving about $20,000. Plus, by not getting the hybrid, you’ll have more gear space in the rear. That said, we can’t imagine the finished product would be anywhere near as fun to drive or as polished as what Toyota offers straight out of the box. Like many a divorce, the 4Runner Trailhunter is expensive because it’s worth it.