2025 Toyota Tacoma: Midsize pickup on the way up

2025 Jeep Gladiator Mojave vs. 2025 Toyota Tacoma TRD Off-Road Double Cab 4x4 vs. 2025 Ford Ranger Supercrew 4x4 Raptor: Midsize trucks, full-size prices.

This week: 2025 Toyota Tacoma TRD Off-Road Double Cab 4x4

Price: $54,829 as tested. Off-Road Premium Package adds much for $8,800: SofTex heated and ventilated seats, JBL stereo, moonroof and more; bed mat, $200; tailgate insert, $89; towing ball, $70.

Conventional wisdom: “Toyota Tacoma Is No Longer a Dinosaur.” Car and Driver headline. (I usually go for more detail but that says it all.)

Marketer’s pitch: “More power for more play.”

Reality: More power. More betterer. But more fuel consumed, too.

What’s new: For 2024, the midsize pickup from Toyota gets a new engine, and a hybrid option is available. The 2025 pretty much carries on as before.

Also, it’s surprising to see the Tacoma acting as the cheap unit here, about $15,000 less than either of the competitors.

Competition: In addition to the Gladiator and Ranger Raptor, there’s the Chevrolet Colorado, GMC Canyon, Honda Ridgeline, and Nissan Frontier.

Up to speed: The small truck from Toyota gets a new power plant under the hood, putting a 2.4-liter turbocharged four-cylinder where a four or six used to go.

The resulting 278-horsepower Tacoma is a spry truck, getting to 60 mph easily, and making passing and recovering from turns and corners quick work. Sport mode really revs it up, and the turbo sounds great going from place to place, especially uphill.

It takes seven seconds to get to 60 mph, according to Car and Driver. This is faster than the six-cylinder-powered Jeep Gladiator.

A 326-horsepower hybrid version is also available; hopefully there’s some fuel savings along for the ride.

Sadly, the turbo only just matches the V-6’s, but we did shave one-tenth of a second off the 0-60 time.

Shifty: The eight-speed automatic transmission does its job nicely.

There’s gear limiting but no real shiftability, which is fine because operating the shifter feels like sliding a spatula through boba.

A six-speed manual remains available, which makes this potentially much more fun than the Gladiator.

On the road: The Tacoma continues to improve beyond the serviceable handling of early Mr. Driver’s Seat testing and has truly been fun for its more recent tests, this one included. Still, I wonder how the handling is in a base model costing $31,000 rather than one that’s almost $55,000.

But let’s enjoy it while we have it. The TRD version snakes through tight turns nicely and along narrow country roads and lanes.

Highway driving is not what you’d call seamless; every block of concrete was distinctly transmitted to occupants. Sport mode actually seemed to improve the feel and certainly made the steering less prone to wandering.

Off the road: Mr. Driver’s Seat gets a pickup. Mr. Driver’s Seat clears the growing pile of brush from his yard. Using 4-low for piloting through the grass frustrated me at first, as the single-dial controller with an accessory ring beneath it is about as user-friendly to operate as this sentence has been easy to read.

Eventually we made our peace but compare that to the big stick in the Gladiator — it’s obvious to just about anyone, which is better than “not so bad once you figure it out.”

Driver’s Seat: The seat is supportive if not quite super comfortable, and driving position is commanding.

The speedometer features a clear digital readout and the tachometer surrounds it; the rest of the info is — in standard Toyota fashion — along either side of the dashboard.

The Lovely Mrs. Passenger Seat got herself two handles for braving the more exciting parts of the ride with Darling Hubby, while Mr. Driver’s Seat had no grab handles at all, making climbing into the cab a little more challenging after two hours of loading branches in the bed. Still the ride has improved over the years.

Friends and stuff: The rear seat provided “eh” accommodations for Sturgis Kid 4.0. Space was decent all around, he reported after a trip to visit Sturgis Kid 1.0, but the seat sits quite upright and is less than 100% comfortable.

The bed on the test model was 5 feet long; a 6-footer is also available. A nice power tailgate made everything easier, but no steps on the test model added challenges. There are no hooks on the top rail of the bed; they’re all on the bottom, so plan ahead if you need to access them after loading up the Tacoma. No step appears on the option list.

Payload maxes out at 1,710 pounds; towing at 6,500. The Gladiator has a tiny advantage on the former and 1,200 pounds on the latter.

Play some tunes: The JBL premium stereo provided pretty good playback — I’d call it an A- or so. I waffled back and forth thinking it was good, then not good, and then it was pretty good.

Operation is generally simple, with a large volume dial and a huge 14-inch touchscreen for everything else. Only the sound adjustment is annoying, with narrow slider bars that are nearly impossible to adjust while moving — because who wants to change the volume on the fly?

Keeping warm and cool: Conversely, the large temperature dials definitely make the numbers easy to zero in on, and the toggles for the rest of the functions perform nicely.

Rectangular vents don’t allow much directional control, though.

Fuel economy: I averaged a disappointing 16 mpg during testing, but that’s about par for the course among the Tacoma’s competitors. It rose to 20 on one highway trip but then dropped back into Disappointmentland, even during the return highway trip.

The V-6 in the 2020 model actually saved fuel over this model.

Where it’s built: Guanajuato, Mexico

How it’s built: Consumer Reports predicts the reliability to be a 2 out of 5, quite a drop from previous years. The magazine cited squeaks and rattles as troublesome areas.

Next week: 2025 Ford Ranger Raptor