2022 Toyota Prado review The benchmark 7-seater SUV #TOYOTAPRADO #LITTLECHILD #MIDSIZESUV
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G'day i'm Syed Faizan toyota has recently subtly updated the land cruiser prado it's one of the best sellers in the country when it comes to suv so we thought we'd get behind the wheel of it this here is the prado vx so it's one down from the top specification kakadu model this competes with things like the mitsubishi pajero sport the new isuzu mux the ford everest there's quite a few competitors in this segment this is a little too expensive at around that 77000 mark the entire prado range kicks off from about 60 grand so there is something in there for everyone today.
We're going to do a detailed review of this car if you do want to skip ahead to other parts of the review you can use the time codes up on the screen there or if you're on youtube just scroll down and use the chapters below and if you haven't done so already i'd love it if you could subscribe to our channel and press the bell icon so you can find out every single time we look at very minor and subtle updated cars so before we kick off i have to apologize on behalf of mother nature it is very windy today you've got 10 exterior colors to pick from all but white and black are an additional 600 so the styling has kind of stayed the same the big change here is with the wheels we'll run through those in a second but prado i don't know it hasn't really changed all that much over the years they just do subtle tweaks every now and then so it inherited this giant grill with the big teeth down the front there but i think it still looks nice and stylish and the other fascinating thing is when we picked this up i thought they accidentally gave us the kakadu that we reviewed like six or seven months ago because this looks literally identical the colors are the same the interior's the same but there are some differences there including the price about 10 000 bucks so there is a big saving if you step one down and i'll run you through some of those differences a little later on so over here you have a set of bi led headlights with led daytime running lights a fog light tucked into there headlamp washers i have mentioned before in another video that these are handy for four-wheel drives because you can get mud come through these little creases here it gets all over your headlights and you have to get out and clean them whereas this will just give them a high pressure squirt to make sure you always have visibility whip around to the side down.
Here you've got 19-inch alloy wheels this is a brand new design so as part of the update this has changed kind of looks nice i guess you have a set of all-terrain tyres that come standard as well with the prado and really if you are going to be doing any off-roading even if it's sort of not all that serious you do want some all-terrains because they're gonna give you just a little bit more traction in mud you can see here today it's been raining a fair bit the the sort of conditions here are quite muddy and those uh tread the tread pattern there is literally already full of mud so if you do anything a little more serious on a road tire you're simply not going to get anywhere so even with the all-terrains here it's still getting a little bit muddy up the top here you have an indicator built into that wing mirror side steps along the bottom there privacy glass set of roof rails and then if you come around to the back look at this flat tailgate so no cost option to move your spare tire from here to under the vehicle the only downside is that your fuel capacity goes from 150 liters to 87 litres because putting the tyre under there reduces uh the fuel capacity by deleting that sub fuel tank but you do get a window here that opens to get things in and out easier it is still a swing tailgate but it sort of makes it a little less cluttered on the back which makes life a little easier let me know what you reckon about the prado is it still competitive there is a brand new land cruiser 300 series coming this should be replaced next year as well and i think that the rest of the segment has moved on so they've probably got a little bit of work to do here but keen to get your thoughts on what you think of the prada we're inside the prado let's kick off with the key so you've got lock unlock and boot then on the back you have land cruiser it's a proximity sensing key so leave that in your pocket once you're inside you have a push button start over here on the driver's side and everything fires to life now what about styling um yeah this is getting on in age and i don't know prado has always been about uh getting things done and i think that's what this style definitely is if you remember the review we did on the kakadu model it had sort of wood grain up the top here and sort of around the place this dials it back just a little bit with just this strap of faux wood grain i think though the color palette is good this beige interior probably isn't going to be great if you have kids and that kind of thing but for the most part this looks i guess classy and nice enough you've got some softer touch materials along the top there piano black around the edges of the infotainment system and then along the bottom here as well but outside of that it's also pretty straightforward touch points it's nice and soft there soft on the door as well how soft is it well we've tested all the main surfaces in this cabin with our durometer if you want to see how this car compares to others we've tested before look at the link in the description now build quality let's see that's a bit a bit shaky but yeah not too bad i think it's just this center bit that's a little bit loose but um the rest of it feels pretty good prado comes with a nine inch infotainment system this has am fm dab plus digital radio built in and then it also uses a 14 speaker jbl branded sound system you've got inbuilt satellite navigation but you also have smartphone mirroring in the form of apple carplay and android auto both of those require a cable i'll show you what apple carplay looks like first there it is so full screen but you'll notice it's just a tiny tiny bit laggy it's not the end of the world but um yeah could just be a little bit quicker keep in mind as well that this stuff operates with the voice recognition system while the inbuilt voice recognition system isn't that great using this with your smartphone paired will use the cloud to recognize.
What you're saying we actually shot a comparison between apple carplay and android auto if you want to see how they compare you can click up here to Read that um let's have a look at android auto so again full screen also similarly laggy you can see it's a little bit delayed there as i flick up and down between uh different menus um another thing worth pointing out as well that you can actually get off-road maps for your smartphone and then using the app that comes with that you can sort of just load it here on the smartphone mirroring screen that's good because if you do go off-roading the inbuilt satellite navigation probably isn't going to do a great job if you go into the depths of the bush but some of those off-road maps actually have trails and tracks that aren't on regular navigation systems so worth keeping that in mind when you're buying your next suv you want to have stuff like this so you can actually head to the bush if you want to head to the bush now what about safety you have autonomous emergency braking with pedestrian detection you have an auto dimming rear vision mirror rear cross traffic alert blind spot monitoring through the wing mirror there you have radar cruise control and a lane departure warning in terms of cameras and parking you have both front and rear parking sensors and a 360 degree camera let's have a look at what that looks like there it is um quality is yeah not that great uh it's quite grainy i don't know why they have this random v section in the middle there uh but you can see here around the car you can't really make out anything there eagles cases and they just look like a bit of a mess but the good news is if you do off-road driving you have cameras off to the sides to help with getting in and about off-road tracks so i guess that is one handy feature but the quality of the cameras isn't amazing let's talk practicality and where are you going to charge your device well you have one usb port down the front here and then 12 volt outlet next to it it's a bit silly having just one usb port because if you have your smartphone hooked up for mirroring that's gone your passenger then can't charge anything unless they have a 12v converter which is a little bit silly i really should be adding more usb ports here in terms of storing your phone though you've got this little slot down the front here that you can go sideways in you've got cup holders down the front here that you can kind of squeeze it into in the 200 series this is a wireless phone charger and in the kakadu you've got switch gear here for the crawl control here it does nothing and it's kind of pointless because when you accelerate your phone just slides straight out of there so i don't really understand what the point in that slot is unless you can find something that fits in there that you can then close it in with you have your cup holders down the front there let's try our coffee fits in okay use our bottle in there as well no dramas you've got some teeth there to hold it in then inside the door you've got storage for your little bottle we'll see if it fits our big bottle as well no but let's see if our big bottle fits in here because we have a fridge look at that and no it doesn't so small bottles only in your fridge unfortunately.
We've got a glove box over here reasonably sized then up here you have a mirror to keep an eye on the kids in the background and then another puller that reveals your sunglasses holder right moving on to comfort you have dual zone automatic climate control you have heated and cooled seats for the first row and then seat heating for the second row your seats here are electrically adjustable both for the driver and front passenger quite comfy seats as well you can see the perforations here for the air conditioning but for a long distance drive this is the type of seat you want to be in steering offers both tilt and reach adjustment and its electric and then for our reach test all of this stuff is easy to reach it's just when you get across to this side you gotta lean into it a little bit to get to it second row what's it like look surprising amount of room back here so my seat is pretty far back and i've got acres of knee room tow room's excellent and headroom is really good as well so impressive on that front you've got bat pockets here controls for the seat heaters and then a third zone of climate control your air vents are in the roof here it is disappointing there's no usb charging back here all you have is a 12 volt outlet you have a center armrest with two cup holders let's throw our bottle into there no problem and then inside the door you've got bottle storage as well now the good thing about these seats in the second row is they slide forwards and backwards to give you more accommodation in the third row but they can also recline as well just in case you want to kick back and relax a little bit so really decent and versatile second row and isofix points on the two outboard seats but i'm keen to give the third row a shot just to see if i can actually fit in there so third row what's it like here uh to get in you pull this lever drops the back of the seat and allows it to slide forward now gotta be honest this isn't a huge gap to get in so i'm gonna have to get a little creative here but i'll use the side step to to climb on in then you work your way through there and away we go so i'm going to bring this back and lock it in so i actually can't go any further than that because my toes are now like wedged into there so it's as far as that'll go put that back in i tell you what look there's a surprising amount of leg room so knee room is okay toe room is is terrible there but i can just turn my legs a little bit and my head is literally touching the roof but it's it's a surprising space for adults i wasn't expecting to be able to fit here uh so easily then on top of that because this rose slides you can sort of move it forwards and backwards to give yourself a bit more room if you do have adults here you've got cup holders off to the sides and then you have your own set of air vents here plus your own grab handles it doesn't look like there's a great deal of room in the boot though so.
Let's go have a look at what we can actually fit in there so i mentioned earlier you've got a few ways of getting access here you can crack this open to retrieve your luggage or you can pull the back open keep in mind it's a little bit frustrating if you park up against a wall like i do at home means getting in and out is a little tricky but you can lock this open so you can get access to things without it decapitating you and chopping your legs off and stuff now behind here it's a sticky beak we have a storage slot and we also have a repair kit over off to the side you have a power outlet which is a handy thing if you need to run a compressor or something like that just off to the side there dropping this is fairly straightforward keep in mind though that you only have a little over 100 liters here so just to put that into context there's my laptop bag that only just fits in there there's no way you'll get a suitcase in there so while you do have an okay amount of room in the third row for adults it really means you have then no space behind the third row so to drop the third row it's a pull of this lever that then falls out of the way that expands the space to about 600 liters and then i'll pop the bags in now so you can get a feel for what that looks like and then finally if you want to go for the most amount of space possible you have to get rid of the second row i'll show you what that looks like with second row gone you have about 1800 liters of cargo space so right on the road in the land cruiser prado this had an update a little while back where they bumped up the amount of torque coming out of this 2.8 litre diesel so of course it's 2.8 litre turbocharged four-cylinder diesel engine makes 150 kilowatts of power and 500 newton meters of torque and that's all mated to a six-speed automatic transmission it's the same engine you get in the hilux this obviously weighs more than the hilux so it feels a little more sluggish in comparison but it's not the end of the world it still has enough punch and i've actually towed with one of these i had one of my cars plus a trailer on the back and it did a pretty good job you're not going to win any traffic like grand prix but it gets up and moving quick enough and keeps up with traffic which is pretty much all.
You can expect from something like this let's talk fuel economy toyota claims 7.9 liters per 100ks from the prado let's look at what we're achieving 11.1 um so still quite a way off the official figure but it is worth keeping in mind this car is brand new it's only done 400 kilometers we've effectively been running it in with a diesel you can expect that for the first couple of thousand kilometers that it's going to be using a little bit more fuel before everything's bedded in and ready to rumble you don't have any drive modes to pick from but you do have a sport mode so if you slot it into the sport mode that gives you slightly sharper throttle response and also quicker gear shifts as well it'll hold on to gears a little longer and then change down gears earlier too to give you slightly more sporty drive toyota doesn't have an official zero to 100 time but we've put it up against the stopwatch to see how it goes okay let's talk handling so permanent all-wheel drive system that means you have decent amount of traction so it's not like a lot of the mute-based suvs in this segment that have rear-wheel drive and then the ability to go to all-wheel drive this actually has that full gamut where you have high four all the time and that gives you that surety behind the wheel especially when you're towing it can get pretty dicey if you just rear wheel drive and towing you can't go into four high on sealed surfaces in those u-based suvs so this mode here is perfect for on-road driving when you need that little bit of extra traction let's talk about the ride so the last time we drove the prado is the kakadu spec and it has air springs adaptive suspension kdss it was kind of kitted out with a whole bunch of gear i actually think this version which has none of that drives way better it just soaks up bumps nicely it's more than happy to have these consecutive undulations i found that the kakadu rode well but it was just a little a little firm at times and just really wasn't tuned that that um that sort of comprehensively whereas this feels great behind the wheel um it is no rolls-royce but it does feel good for an off-road focused suv often they're they're not really the benchmark in handling or ride comfort whereas this sits beautifully in the middle there where it feels nice and comfortable and isn't overly firm or too sporty what about road noise we're getting a little bit of noise coming in from uh the wind and the wing mirrors but outside of that you don't really get a great deal of tyre noise the engine can get a little thrashy inside the cabin if you get stuck into it but for the most part it's actually quite a pleasant place to be seated on the visibility front it is excellent out the front there really good out the back uh even if you have the third row up it's still not that much of an impedance in terms of your view big wing mirrors as well with blind spot monitor built into those so you can clearly see outside of the vehicle and front and rear parking sensors so it's like a win-win around the city as well and finally we have a turning circle of 11.6 meters which is actually pretty reasonable for something this size means you're not going to get stuck with three-point turns every single place you go.
Okay let's do just a little bit of light off-roading here to see what the prado is like before we get stuck into it i'll just run you through the off-road specifications you have four high which is just your standard drive mode it's permanent full time four wheel drive you also have a low range transfer case you have a center differential lock a rear differential lock hill descent control and also with uh the rear diff lock uh it's worth noting that you have to be in low range in terms of your ground clearance it comes in at 219 millimeters approach angle is 30.4 degrees which is the angle of the face you can approach before you hit anything the departure angle is 23.5 degrees which is the same but in reverse and finally you have 700 millimeters of waiting depth uh given it is so wet today uh we're gonna go tackle the logs they are still a little bit greasy so i'll leave it all in just the standard um sort of full drive modes at the moment we'll see how it goes getting up here i don't think it'll be too much of a drama but um happy to be corrected okay here we go so far so good as we start on the logs lean into the throttle it's actually doing a decent job it's not fast at all kill those parking sensors excellent okay so we climbed that without any problems at all that was actually pretty effortless for the prada uh we'll run down our hill now pop the hill descent control on we'll see how that goes whoa that is way too fast that is way too quick yeah i'm going to take over that stupid fast um i don't know whether it's just not detecting we're on a decline we're like facing down i don't know why it wouldn't be but that is way too quick mainly because we have lots of ruts here and they're quite deep as well which means if you were to drop into one of these and it ran away from you uh you could do some serious damage there like that one right there we have you know a tyre in the air so you definitely don't want to be hitting one of those without any control over the scent you know i understand the logic behind these hill descent controls but i don't know some of them just aren't really calibrated very well okay next up we want to see how rigid this chassis is so we're going on our little uh sort of seesaw set up here and big angle when we get to the center here and we've got two wheels off the ground i'm going to try opening and closing the door that should give us a good indication of how rigid the chassis is so there it is about there that's pretty good let's put a bit more angle on it..jpg)
No dramas so tick on the rigid chassis next up is our offset mogul this will give us an indication of what the all-wheel drive system is like so in this situation we're going to have two wheels off the ground and we're going to rely on the car's traction control to start with to get us out of here so i don't have any of the diffs locked at the moment so i'll just roll into this there it is there we have two wheels off the ground right now i've got my foot off the throttle i can see that wheel is starting to move a little bit the way into the throttle a bit more okay it's starting to spin and you can hear the traction control that's pretty good that was all just traction control getting us out of there that's impressive we didn't even need any diffs locked uh this is yeah when i say light off roading we're not really challenging the prado at all and look it's a toyota and i say that in the sense that they develop these things to to tackle virtually anything they've put a lot of effort into tackling um things with the bigger land cruiser so you can see here that all this stuff is pretty sort of mickey mouse all right i reckon the prados had a little easy um okay let's try going back up the hill that we went down a couple of decent ruts in there and i really just want to see what these other modes do i think we've um we've picked a very easy challenge for the prado let's see how it goes so so far so good it's still in the high range with none of the differentials locked we'll see what happens here there we go okay i found a bit of a challenge oh it's just about to make it but not quite okay so go back down this is in this situation where we're going uphill and we've got big rats like that one we're basically asking the the car to be able to send all of its talk to the wheel that's easiest to access and in this situation it's going to be the ones that have no traction so to to aid that we can lock the center diff what that does is it sends 50 talk to the front axle 50 to the rear axle we'll see if that helps us get up if that doesn't work i'm going to lock the rear diff as well.
So let's give this a shot okay crawling up to that same section there's the front left in okay and this is where we got stuck last time and there it is there it is man this this thing is a beast so that was just with the center diff lock i know this isn't like super serious four wheel driving and some of you guys that go and you know climb everest and stuff in your four-wheel drives or think it's a bit mickey mouse but for the average consumer that's what they're going to be doing and the fact that you can get up most things without touching your controls is pretty cool but then if you need to you can just lock the center diff and it'll climb up something like that i probably wouldn't go up if it was my own car so yeah pretty impressed with the prado in terms of an off-road vehicle so the land cruiser prado i think i say this a lot about toyotas they're just trusty and dependable this is starting to get on in age and there is a brand new one coming next year but i feel confident recommending it because it'll go anywhere it'll do things that most people will do and if you want to go that one step further you can go and get a litany of aftermarket accessories for it that'll allow you to go even further it's pretty efficient for what it is it'll tow enough for what most people want to do and it's comfortable enough for long distance drives so it really is hard to complain it is a little let down in terms of technology a lot of the competitors in this segment are now moving the game forward in terms of what they offer inside and when something like the new ford everest comes out with a v6 diesel big infotainment screen a hybrid as well this is going to feel comprehensively old but at the moment if you do want to splash some cash on this i wouldn't even bother going to the kakadu it's an extra 10 grand for not a whole lot of extra features this really is the sweet spot in the range the vx is where i would be spending my money now.
Let me know did you buy a prado how's it been in the long run and are you looking at upgrading it when a brand new version of this comes out or even right now let me know what you think in the comments section below if you did enjoy this blog please make sure you share it with your mates and if you haven't done so already follow to our blogspot and press the follow button you'll be able to find out every single time we publish a new review but until next time safe driving. #TOYOTAPRADO #LITTLECHILD #MIDSIZESUV
We're going to do a detailed review of this car if you do want to skip ahead to other parts of the review you can use the time codes up on the screen there or if you're on youtube just scroll down and use the chapters below and if you haven't done so already i'd love it if you could subscribe to our channel and press the bell icon so you can find out every single time we look at very minor and subtle updated cars so before we kick off i have to apologize on behalf of mother nature it is very windy today you've got 10 exterior colors to pick from all but white and black are an additional 600 so the styling has kind of stayed the same the big change here is with the wheels we'll run through those in a second but prado i don't know it hasn't really changed all that much over the years they just do subtle tweaks every now and then so it inherited this giant grill with the big teeth down the front there but i think it still looks nice and stylish and the other fascinating thing is when we picked this up i thought they accidentally gave us the kakadu that we reviewed like six or seven months ago because this looks literally identical the colors are the same the interior's the same but there are some differences there including the price about 10 000 bucks so there is a big saving if you step one down and i'll run you through some of those differences a little later on so over here you have a set of bi led headlights with led daytime running lights a fog light tucked into there headlamp washers i have mentioned before in another video that these are handy for four-wheel drives because you can get mud come through these little creases here it gets all over your headlights and you have to get out and clean them whereas this will just give them a high pressure squirt to make sure you always have visibility whip around to the side down.
Here you've got 19-inch alloy wheels this is a brand new design so as part of the update this has changed kind of looks nice i guess you have a set of all-terrain tyres that come standard as well with the prado and really if you are going to be doing any off-roading even if it's sort of not all that serious you do want some all-terrains because they're gonna give you just a little bit more traction in mud you can see here today it's been raining a fair bit the the sort of conditions here are quite muddy and those uh tread the tread pattern there is literally already full of mud so if you do anything a little more serious on a road tire you're simply not going to get anywhere so even with the all-terrains here it's still getting a little bit muddy up the top here you have an indicator built into that wing mirror side steps along the bottom there privacy glass set of roof rails and then if you come around to the back look at this flat tailgate so no cost option to move your spare tire from here to under the vehicle the only downside is that your fuel capacity goes from 150 liters to 87 litres because putting the tyre under there reduces uh the fuel capacity by deleting that sub fuel tank but you do get a window here that opens to get things in and out easier it is still a swing tailgate but it sort of makes it a little less cluttered on the back which makes life a little easier let me know what you reckon about the prado is it still competitive there is a brand new land cruiser 300 series coming this should be replaced next year as well and i think that the rest of the segment has moved on so they've probably got a little bit of work to do here but keen to get your thoughts on what you think of the prada we're inside the prado let's kick off with the key so you've got lock unlock and boot then on the back you have land cruiser it's a proximity sensing key so leave that in your pocket once you're inside you have a push button start over here on the driver's side and everything fires to life now what about styling um yeah this is getting on in age and i don't know prado has always been about uh getting things done and i think that's what this style definitely is if you remember the review we did on the kakadu model it had sort of wood grain up the top here and sort of around the place this dials it back just a little bit with just this strap of faux wood grain i think though the color palette is good this beige interior probably isn't going to be great if you have kids and that kind of thing but for the most part this looks i guess classy and nice enough you've got some softer touch materials along the top there piano black around the edges of the infotainment system and then along the bottom here as well but outside of that it's also pretty straightforward touch points it's nice and soft there soft on the door as well how soft is it well we've tested all the main surfaces in this cabin with our durometer if you want to see how this car compares to others we've tested before look at the link in the description now build quality let's see that's a bit a bit shaky but yeah not too bad i think it's just this center bit that's a little bit loose but um the rest of it feels pretty good prado comes with a nine inch infotainment system this has am fm dab plus digital radio built in and then it also uses a 14 speaker jbl branded sound system you've got inbuilt satellite navigation but you also have smartphone mirroring in the form of apple carplay and android auto both of those require a cable i'll show you what apple carplay looks like first there it is so full screen but you'll notice it's just a tiny tiny bit laggy it's not the end of the world but um yeah could just be a little bit quicker keep in mind as well that this stuff operates with the voice recognition system while the inbuilt voice recognition system isn't that great using this with your smartphone paired will use the cloud to recognize.
What you're saying we actually shot a comparison between apple carplay and android auto if you want to see how they compare you can click up here to Read that um let's have a look at android auto so again full screen also similarly laggy you can see it's a little bit delayed there as i flick up and down between uh different menus um another thing worth pointing out as well that you can actually get off-road maps for your smartphone and then using the app that comes with that you can sort of just load it here on the smartphone mirroring screen that's good because if you do go off-roading the inbuilt satellite navigation probably isn't going to do a great job if you go into the depths of the bush but some of those off-road maps actually have trails and tracks that aren't on regular navigation systems so worth keeping that in mind when you're buying your next suv you want to have stuff like this so you can actually head to the bush if you want to head to the bush now what about safety you have autonomous emergency braking with pedestrian detection you have an auto dimming rear vision mirror rear cross traffic alert blind spot monitoring through the wing mirror there you have radar cruise control and a lane departure warning in terms of cameras and parking you have both front and rear parking sensors and a 360 degree camera let's have a look at what that looks like there it is um quality is yeah not that great uh it's quite grainy i don't know why they have this random v section in the middle there uh but you can see here around the car you can't really make out anything there eagles cases and they just look like a bit of a mess but the good news is if you do off-road driving you have cameras off to the sides to help with getting in and about off-road tracks so i guess that is one handy feature but the quality of the cameras isn't amazing let's talk practicality and where are you going to charge your device well you have one usb port down the front here and then 12 volt outlet next to it it's a bit silly having just one usb port because if you have your smartphone hooked up for mirroring that's gone your passenger then can't charge anything unless they have a 12v converter which is a little bit silly i really should be adding more usb ports here in terms of storing your phone though you've got this little slot down the front here that you can go sideways in you've got cup holders down the front here that you can kind of squeeze it into in the 200 series this is a wireless phone charger and in the kakadu you've got switch gear here for the crawl control here it does nothing and it's kind of pointless because when you accelerate your phone just slides straight out of there so i don't really understand what the point in that slot is unless you can find something that fits in there that you can then close it in with you have your cup holders down the front there let's try our coffee fits in okay use our bottle in there as well no dramas you've got some teeth there to hold it in then inside the door you've got storage for your little bottle we'll see if it fits our big bottle as well no but let's see if our big bottle fits in here because we have a fridge look at that and no it doesn't so small bottles only in your fridge unfortunately.
We've got a glove box over here reasonably sized then up here you have a mirror to keep an eye on the kids in the background and then another puller that reveals your sunglasses holder right moving on to comfort you have dual zone automatic climate control you have heated and cooled seats for the first row and then seat heating for the second row your seats here are electrically adjustable both for the driver and front passenger quite comfy seats as well you can see the perforations here for the air conditioning but for a long distance drive this is the type of seat you want to be in steering offers both tilt and reach adjustment and its electric and then for our reach test all of this stuff is easy to reach it's just when you get across to this side you gotta lean into it a little bit to get to it second row what's it like look surprising amount of room back here so my seat is pretty far back and i've got acres of knee room tow room's excellent and headroom is really good as well so impressive on that front you've got bat pockets here controls for the seat heaters and then a third zone of climate control your air vents are in the roof here it is disappointing there's no usb charging back here all you have is a 12 volt outlet you have a center armrest with two cup holders let's throw our bottle into there no problem and then inside the door you've got bottle storage as well now the good thing about these seats in the second row is they slide forwards and backwards to give you more accommodation in the third row but they can also recline as well just in case you want to kick back and relax a little bit so really decent and versatile second row and isofix points on the two outboard seats but i'm keen to give the third row a shot just to see if i can actually fit in there so third row what's it like here uh to get in you pull this lever drops the back of the seat and allows it to slide forward now gotta be honest this isn't a huge gap to get in so i'm gonna have to get a little creative here but i'll use the side step to to climb on in then you work your way through there and away we go so i'm going to bring this back and lock it in so i actually can't go any further than that because my toes are now like wedged into there so it's as far as that'll go put that back in i tell you what look there's a surprising amount of leg room so knee room is okay toe room is is terrible there but i can just turn my legs a little bit and my head is literally touching the roof but it's it's a surprising space for adults i wasn't expecting to be able to fit here uh so easily then on top of that because this rose slides you can sort of move it forwards and backwards to give yourself a bit more room if you do have adults here you've got cup holders off to the sides and then you have your own set of air vents here plus your own grab handles it doesn't look like there's a great deal of room in the boot though so.
Let's go have a look at what we can actually fit in there so i mentioned earlier you've got a few ways of getting access here you can crack this open to retrieve your luggage or you can pull the back open keep in mind it's a little bit frustrating if you park up against a wall like i do at home means getting in and out is a little tricky but you can lock this open so you can get access to things without it decapitating you and chopping your legs off and stuff now behind here it's a sticky beak we have a storage slot and we also have a repair kit over off to the side you have a power outlet which is a handy thing if you need to run a compressor or something like that just off to the side there dropping this is fairly straightforward keep in mind though that you only have a little over 100 liters here so just to put that into context there's my laptop bag that only just fits in there there's no way you'll get a suitcase in there so while you do have an okay amount of room in the third row for adults it really means you have then no space behind the third row so to drop the third row it's a pull of this lever that then falls out of the way that expands the space to about 600 liters and then i'll pop the bags in now so you can get a feel for what that looks like and then finally if you want to go for the most amount of space possible you have to get rid of the second row i'll show you what that looks like with second row gone you have about 1800 liters of cargo space so right on the road in the land cruiser prado this had an update a little while back where they bumped up the amount of torque coming out of this 2.8 litre diesel so of course it's 2.8 litre turbocharged four-cylinder diesel engine makes 150 kilowatts of power and 500 newton meters of torque and that's all mated to a six-speed automatic transmission it's the same engine you get in the hilux this obviously weighs more than the hilux so it feels a little more sluggish in comparison but it's not the end of the world it still has enough punch and i've actually towed with one of these i had one of my cars plus a trailer on the back and it did a pretty good job you're not going to win any traffic like grand prix but it gets up and moving quick enough and keeps up with traffic which is pretty much all.
You can expect from something like this let's talk fuel economy toyota claims 7.9 liters per 100ks from the prado let's look at what we're achieving 11.1 um so still quite a way off the official figure but it is worth keeping in mind this car is brand new it's only done 400 kilometers we've effectively been running it in with a diesel you can expect that for the first couple of thousand kilometers that it's going to be using a little bit more fuel before everything's bedded in and ready to rumble you don't have any drive modes to pick from but you do have a sport mode so if you slot it into the sport mode that gives you slightly sharper throttle response and also quicker gear shifts as well it'll hold on to gears a little longer and then change down gears earlier too to give you slightly more sporty drive toyota doesn't have an official zero to 100 time but we've put it up against the stopwatch to see how it goes okay let's talk handling so permanent all-wheel drive system that means you have decent amount of traction so it's not like a lot of the mute-based suvs in this segment that have rear-wheel drive and then the ability to go to all-wheel drive this actually has that full gamut where you have high four all the time and that gives you that surety behind the wheel especially when you're towing it can get pretty dicey if you just rear wheel drive and towing you can't go into four high on sealed surfaces in those u-based suvs so this mode here is perfect for on-road driving when you need that little bit of extra traction let's talk about the ride so the last time we drove the prado is the kakadu spec and it has air springs adaptive suspension kdss it was kind of kitted out with a whole bunch of gear i actually think this version which has none of that drives way better it just soaks up bumps nicely it's more than happy to have these consecutive undulations i found that the kakadu rode well but it was just a little a little firm at times and just really wasn't tuned that that um that sort of comprehensively whereas this feels great behind the wheel um it is no rolls-royce but it does feel good for an off-road focused suv often they're they're not really the benchmark in handling or ride comfort whereas this sits beautifully in the middle there where it feels nice and comfortable and isn't overly firm or too sporty what about road noise we're getting a little bit of noise coming in from uh the wind and the wing mirrors but outside of that you don't really get a great deal of tyre noise the engine can get a little thrashy inside the cabin if you get stuck into it but for the most part it's actually quite a pleasant place to be seated on the visibility front it is excellent out the front there really good out the back uh even if you have the third row up it's still not that much of an impedance in terms of your view big wing mirrors as well with blind spot monitor built into those so you can clearly see outside of the vehicle and front and rear parking sensors so it's like a win-win around the city as well and finally we have a turning circle of 11.6 meters which is actually pretty reasonable for something this size means you're not going to get stuck with three-point turns every single place you go.
Okay let's do just a little bit of light off-roading here to see what the prado is like before we get stuck into it i'll just run you through the off-road specifications you have four high which is just your standard drive mode it's permanent full time four wheel drive you also have a low range transfer case you have a center differential lock a rear differential lock hill descent control and also with uh the rear diff lock uh it's worth noting that you have to be in low range in terms of your ground clearance it comes in at 219 millimeters approach angle is 30.4 degrees which is the angle of the face you can approach before you hit anything the departure angle is 23.5 degrees which is the same but in reverse and finally you have 700 millimeters of waiting depth uh given it is so wet today uh we're gonna go tackle the logs they are still a little bit greasy so i'll leave it all in just the standard um sort of full drive modes at the moment we'll see how it goes getting up here i don't think it'll be too much of a drama but um happy to be corrected okay here we go so far so good as we start on the logs lean into the throttle it's actually doing a decent job it's not fast at all kill those parking sensors excellent okay so we climbed that without any problems at all that was actually pretty effortless for the prada uh we'll run down our hill now pop the hill descent control on we'll see how that goes whoa that is way too fast that is way too quick yeah i'm going to take over that stupid fast um i don't know whether it's just not detecting we're on a decline we're like facing down i don't know why it wouldn't be but that is way too quick mainly because we have lots of ruts here and they're quite deep as well which means if you were to drop into one of these and it ran away from you uh you could do some serious damage there like that one right there we have you know a tyre in the air so you definitely don't want to be hitting one of those without any control over the scent you know i understand the logic behind these hill descent controls but i don't know some of them just aren't really calibrated very well okay next up we want to see how rigid this chassis is so we're going on our little uh sort of seesaw set up here and big angle when we get to the center here and we've got two wheels off the ground i'm going to try opening and closing the door that should give us a good indication of how rigid the chassis is so there it is about there that's pretty good let's put a bit more angle on it.
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No dramas so tick on the rigid chassis next up is our offset mogul this will give us an indication of what the all-wheel drive system is like so in this situation we're going to have two wheels off the ground and we're going to rely on the car's traction control to start with to get us out of here so i don't have any of the diffs locked at the moment so i'll just roll into this there it is there we have two wheels off the ground right now i've got my foot off the throttle i can see that wheel is starting to move a little bit the way into the throttle a bit more okay it's starting to spin and you can hear the traction control that's pretty good that was all just traction control getting us out of there that's impressive we didn't even need any diffs locked uh this is yeah when i say light off roading we're not really challenging the prado at all and look it's a toyota and i say that in the sense that they develop these things to to tackle virtually anything they've put a lot of effort into tackling um things with the bigger land cruiser so you can see here that all this stuff is pretty sort of mickey mouse all right i reckon the prados had a little easy um okay let's try going back up the hill that we went down a couple of decent ruts in there and i really just want to see what these other modes do i think we've um we've picked a very easy challenge for the prado let's see how it goes so so far so good it's still in the high range with none of the differentials locked we'll see what happens here there we go okay i found a bit of a challenge oh it's just about to make it but not quite okay so go back down this is in this situation where we're going uphill and we've got big rats like that one we're basically asking the the car to be able to send all of its talk to the wheel that's easiest to access and in this situation it's going to be the ones that have no traction so to to aid that we can lock the center diff what that does is it sends 50 talk to the front axle 50 to the rear axle we'll see if that helps us get up if that doesn't work i'm going to lock the rear diff as well.
So let's give this a shot okay crawling up to that same section there's the front left in okay and this is where we got stuck last time and there it is there it is man this this thing is a beast so that was just with the center diff lock i know this isn't like super serious four wheel driving and some of you guys that go and you know climb everest and stuff in your four-wheel drives or think it's a bit mickey mouse but for the average consumer that's what they're going to be doing and the fact that you can get up most things without touching your controls is pretty cool but then if you need to you can just lock the center diff and it'll climb up something like that i probably wouldn't go up if it was my own car so yeah pretty impressed with the prado in terms of an off-road vehicle so the land cruiser prado i think i say this a lot about toyotas they're just trusty and dependable this is starting to get on in age and there is a brand new one coming next year but i feel confident recommending it because it'll go anywhere it'll do things that most people will do and if you want to go that one step further you can go and get a litany of aftermarket accessories for it that'll allow you to go even further it's pretty efficient for what it is it'll tow enough for what most people want to do and it's comfortable enough for long distance drives so it really is hard to complain it is a little let down in terms of technology a lot of the competitors in this segment are now moving the game forward in terms of what they offer inside and when something like the new ford everest comes out with a v6 diesel big infotainment screen a hybrid as well this is going to feel comprehensively old but at the moment if you do want to splash some cash on this i wouldn't even bother going to the kakadu it's an extra 10 grand for not a whole lot of extra features this really is the sweet spot in the range the vx is where i would be spending my money now.
Let me know did you buy a prado how's it been in the long run and are you looking at upgrading it when a brand new version of this comes out or even right now let me know what you think in the comments section below if you did enjoy this blog please make sure you share it with your mates and if you haven't done so already follow to our blogspot and press the follow button you'll be able to find out every single time we publish a new review but until next time safe driving. #TOYOTAPRADO #LITTLECHILD #MIDSIZESUV
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