Why a 4Runner over the other options?

Being completely honest I would have gone with a Badlands Bronco if the dealers were not playing games everything I called to purchase one. I refused to pay over MSRP. Took a bit with Toyota dealers but eventually found one that sold to me at MSRP.

The reason behind the Bronco for me came down to what I like to do which is most rock crawling. 35s, front and rear lockers, sway bar discos were kind of a no brainer. Also have the utility of a normal SUV unlike Jeep and the road manners again were superior to Jeep.

That being said I'm very happy with my 4R

 

Same here, had Ford been able to produce a base manual 2 door sasquatch like they bragged about, and if the dealers didn't demand a 10k+ surcharge just for the honor of putting down an order with them, I may have gotten that instead. After waiting years and playing games with multiple dealers I gave up and came home to Toyota.

The bozos running Ford nowadays along with their unscrupulous dealers can go suck some green limes. They can go kick rocks with their overflowing lots with no one willing to buy their 23 Broncos still with ADMs on many of them.

Funny thing is in 22, I custom ordered an F250, paid with a check, and the dealer still tried to charge me a market adjustment because they are slimey clowns. It will likely be the last Ford I ever buy. Since then I bought two new 4Runners, that's ~100k that Ford already lost from me.

 

That reminds me the new Sequoia, Tundra, Lexus GX550,....

 

There are no other options that come with the most sought-after, crucial 4R feature (it's four words)

 

Because it's awesome

 

Because my old one seems like it will outlive me.

 

I can share my two cents,

I owned a Jeep Wrangler Sport from 2020 to 2021 (sold due to financial troubles)

bought and owned a 2020 Jeep Rubicon 3.6k for 2 years. I just trade it for a new 4Runner TRD Off Road Premium

reasons why I change it:

- 4Runner is a more well round balance overall. Sure you can do more extreme off road hard crawling with a jeep, but in average, the 4Runner will be able to tackle majority of the trails the usual user would do.

- tow capacity is higher. I could see that the jeep struggle to even carry a light trailer. The 4Runner is a beast.

- second row has airbags. Jeep wrangler doesn’t. I have 3 kids and it never felt right that I am driving a car that is safer for me than for my kids

- reliability. Started to have some weird jerk when accelerating. The dealer didn’t think it was unusual. I can’t stand driving a car that I know can break anytime. In my new Toyota I feel I can go anywhere anyday

- interior space. Big difference. Roomier. Second row seat can recline while Jeep seats can’t.

- 4Runner trunk space is massive compared to jeep wrangler

- 4runner has multi terrain system, Jeep doesn’t. Jeep has lockers (rubicon) but 4Runner has ATrac and it’s just easier for a non expert person like me

I think jeep can go further in the wild forest, difficult off road trails and obstacles. The fixed front axles is wonderful compare to IFS of 4Runner… but this is true only in off road trails. In the highway… confort in 4Runner is amazing.

my only complaint with my new 4Runner is that my wife get sleepy too fast. with the old jeep noise, she didn’t fall asleep that much hahahaha

 

Got swayed again by the Toyota 4x4 lore. Had a 1st gen taco and was fed up by the needle bearing issue (before the ECGS bushing days)

Then had a forester for problem free 10 years(other than warranty for oil consumption) sold it with crazy high resale value (lost only $11k in value over 10 years ownership)

here I am again, ready for the Toyota pains

 

FWIW, I've seen rental cars and rental vans on city tires going through Titus Canyon, on the way to Racetrack and other spots you would not expect to see them. It's not surprising really. People will do crazy things without thinking twice. Keeping the tow guys well fed.

Last time I went to Death Valley a few years ago, I saw more Tacomas than I've ever seen in my life on the trails. Tons of 4Runners too.

 

Bronco and rock crawling Get a short Jeep dude! Matt's Banana outcrawled the most capable version of the Bronco.

 

To be fair, it's highly modified.

Dude has 1.7m followers now and is making bank off his videos. Now he's got major sponsors. He's showing off his wrecker at SEMA. He's got merchandise. He's really blown it up in a very short amount of time.

Glad to see he didn't go to jail. He seems like a cool dude.

 

Can't win from two live axles. Let's have Bronco CRaptor Vs. the Banana

 

Went to Chaco Canyon NM during the "monsoon season". Needed 4WD in a couple of mudholes. One poor tourist from Germany was stuck. I hadn't planned on going on dirt roads, so my tug strap was at home. On a two-week vacation, so the back was full. Told him we'd let the rangers know. They couldn't help him. We saw him at the visitor's center later calling for help. We left some food and drinks for him. On our way out, we stopped again and asked if he needed anything. He said, "No. AAA was on the way but it would be 4 hours until someone got to him!" Coulda been serious if he hadn't gotten to the VS!

 

The used LC200 is too expensive.

 

Same here, almost. When I saw how hard it was raining, I bailed out before leaving the highway. It's no place to be when the water is running. Although I've been there before, I still want to go back.

 

If I was going to trade Toyota reliability for power I would likely skip the Bronco and go with a Jeep 392.
When Ford starts shoving N/A V8's into Broncos we'll talk xD

That said Toyota is moving toward hybrid powertrains and turbocharged engines as well so the 5th Gen 4R might be the end of an era unfortunately.

 

Everything was bone dry except for30-50-foot-long dips in the road. Should not have come in from the south! (Darn GPS!)

 

I've driven all 3 and choose to stay with Toyota for personal preference. Having owned a gen 3 and 4 make it cool. Now i can say i owned a 5th gen. It's like owning a gen 2,3,4 and 5 G19.

 

Recon package is now available on the 2 door Rubicon with 4.88. Plus, you can have the dealer mount 37's without affecting your warranty, and zero rubbing. That's what you get if you want the best offroader. Pass the stupid Bronco

 

I had two Rubicons. TJ and a JK. Was over just over Jeeps in general that's why I wanted a Bronco or 4R.

 

Probably been said a million times in this thread… for Toyota reliability.

I’ve been a Toyota/Honda household my whole life (my first car in high school was a used 82 Honda) and my family has been driving them since the late 70s. The runner was a nice step up in comfort from my 2014 Tacoma while still being very familiar and simplicity of manual dials and controls..

That + here in the northeast there really aren’t any rock crawling opportunities that would test a lifted Wrangler or Bronco, and the 4R is much more livable for commuting.

 

Toyota for reliability. I bought it for my son to drive back and forth to college which will be about 4 hours each way.

 

TLDR: the 4Runner is 80% as capable as the Wrangler, more comfortable and more reliable. The Bronco is a 4R (off road capability) with different clothes, but less reliable.

I started 4wheeling before I had a driver’s license. We lived in the country and I started driving at 13 years old. My best friend owned a 1960-something Bronco and we drove it in the Mojave desert any time we weren’t riding m/c. I got a 1972 International Scout II when I turned 16 and wheeled the piss out of it. I’ve since owned four Jeeps and lived in desert/mountains, PNW. I know, who cares about the backstory, but it’s just to say I have a lot of off road experience and can’t give up being about to get out where most others aren’t.

Fast forward to about five/six years ago. My g/f had a 4Runner. I never gave credit to “soccer-mom-mobiles”. She thought her 4R was pretty cool and quite the off road rig and I kind of had a sideways grin thinking, you don’t know off road. She wanted some new tires, liked the stock tires on my Rubicon. We got her some BFG AT/KO2 tires, slightly larger than stock. We drove a lot of forest service roads, fishing, backcountry driving. I recognized a fairly tame “road” out in the woods and said something about it going to a cool under-used campsite. She said lets go. Well, it was wet, raining, with a small stream coming down the “road”. I didn’t know much about all the buttons in her rig but I locked the center diff and pushed the A-trac button. The 4R started doing it’s thing, making all kinds of weird noise (brake/lock) which she wasn’t used to, and neither was I, but I recognized what it was doing. She got a little nervous because the road was really rocky, rutted out, muddy and wet and getting worse. I just said, “your new tires are loving this!” and she calmed down a little bit. As we kept going, it got worse, and I started getting nervous while she just trusted what I was doing. We ended up climbing this washed out road and passed two well-built off road rigs coming down. They stopped and said it was impassable a little further, which it was, but we hit their tracks in the snow near the top and turned around. We'd gone as far as a couple built rigs with 35" tires.

It certainly isn’t a Jeep JLR (2-door, Rubicon, SFA, lockers front and rear), but after doing some more research on Toyota reliability, hundreds of thousands of miles on an engine with regular maintenance and having gone out a lot more often with the 4R, I was a believer. We would go out with the Rubicon on Saturday and take the 4R the next day. The 4R just kept going everywhere the Rubicon would go; albeit, maybe with a little more speed or momentum, maybe not as nice as a 100:1 crawl ratio. So, I started thinking about trails and made my own little “scale” in my head. If the hardest trail I’ve ever done is a 10, then the 4R can probably do an 8. If the hardest trail I’ve ever done was a 10 and I’ve only done a 10 a handful of times, how many times am I doing an 8. Not very often. How often am I doing a 3 or 4 or 5 or even 6. Those might be 90% of the time I’m out in the woods. So, why do I have a JLR when I’ll only ever use it (to the 10) another once or twice in the next five years. Makes a lot more sense to have something that is more comfortable, more reliable, with 80% of the capability.

So, why a 4R over the competition? The 4R will take me 80% of the places the JLR will take me, and it’ll do it more comfortably 100% of the time. The 4R will likely last twice as long, with less cost. BTW, I was an early Bronco order (first day of reservations), but cancelled my order when Ford couldn’t deliver it in a reasonable amount of time and it became clear the Bronco was more about show than go. I’d say the 4R is as capable as the Bronco (except the front locker difference) and more reliable.

 

This what Google says about the Jeep, Duck thing:
https://www.google.com/search?q=wha...AMAkgcEMzEuOaAHrq0C&sclient=gws-wiz#cobssid=s

 

Reliability and appearance for me.

 

This right here. Never ever give up on your childhood dreams.

Oh, and because the collection of ducks Jeep people have on their windshields lacks appeal. We had two Jeeps, a 1998 Jeep Cherokee that we bought used with 180K miles as a first car for our daughter. She ended up taking my '02 Honda Civic instead because the gas was killing her going back and forth to work; hubby took the Jeep instead.

Once daughter started college in 2012, we bought her a 2009 Jeep Wrangler. Fun to drive (stick shift!) but the gas likewise was an issue for a poor college student. She also said it would randomly shut off at stoplights. Traded Jeep for a 2014 Toyota Corolla that would get 35mpg all day every day.

 

Even at 2:00 a.m. on the weekends?

 

Especially then!