If you’re looking for a compact pickup, or what they’re calling a mid-sized pickup now, I suppose, take a good look at the Toyota Tacoma TRD Pro. This thing is packed with features that make it easier to get off the paved roads and out to your favorite fishing or hunting spot.
For one thing, there’s the size. It’s a small pickup, even with the crew cab, so it’ll go places my three-quarter-ton Ram simply can’t go. It sits a little higher than its non-TRD Pro counterparts, and with that short wheelbase, you’re not likely to end up in a place where you’re going to get high-centered.
The TRD Pro package also comes with Toyota’s Multi-Terrain System and the Crawl feature. I used the Mud setting in the Multi-Terrain System when we got a hefty dumping of rain, then snow, then mud. The computers in the Tacoma felt the slip in the wheels, and they allowed just the right amount to help me get through the gumbo mud that apparently still lives on my driveway, despite several thousand dollars worth of dirt work and gravel applications.
I would like to see some better mud tires on the TRD Pro, though. I wasn’t very impressed with the Goodyear Wrangler All-Terrain Adventurers it came with. They’re great tires on pavement, ice, snow, and even sand, but they didn’t have the grip I like on mud. I was thankful to have that Multi-Terrain System to overcome the tires’ deficiencies.
The Tacoma TRD Pro is a fun little truck, overall. But it is little. It was a fairly tight fit for my family of four, though my boys, like me, are fairly large. It would be a great truck for someone who likes to get up to the woods, as long as he doesn’t need to take many other full-sized humans with him when he heads for the hills.
