2022 Toyota Tacoma SR5 Trail 4x4 Review and Off-Road Test #AMERICANSUV #ROADSIDE #TUFFSIDEVEHICLE

               This is the 2022 toyota tacoma sr5 trail edition we're gonna check out all the features and then take it to our test hill to see if this thing's any good off-road that's coming up right now on driving sports tv the tacoma is getting a bit long in the tooth but that's not really stopping toyota from adding on features with each new year take for example the trail edition reintroduced in 2021 for 2022 the trail edition gets new features to make it even better off-road what differentiates the trail from a normal sr5 is a long list of off-road focused goodies it includes a mild suspension lift of 1.1 inches in the front and a half inch in the back also check out these tires and wheels these are 16-inch alloys that look like they came off of a trd pro they're wrapped in goodyear wrangler territory altering tires that are reinforced with kevlar this should give us decent traction when we hit the trail later one thing to note that even though this is an all-terrain it is not three-peak rated so even though it is mud snow rated it's not something you really want to use in deep snow conditions in the front it has a skid plate borrowed from the trd off-road so it's not like the big chunky one that you get on the trd pro but it still does the job inside it has all-season mats and then of course on the back it has a trail badge prices you see it here with a number of options 43 164 u.s dollars including destination and delivery.

                       Under the hood is a legendary 3.5 liter v6 engine it's good for up to 278 horsepower and 265 pound-feet of torque it's connected to a six-speed automatic transmission power goes to all four wheels with a part-time four-wheel drive system enhanced with a rear locking differential epa rate says set up at 18 miles to the gallon in town and 22 on the highway a couple things i want to point out about this vehicle is that the suspension's actually been lifted slightly it has 9.4 inches of ground clearance which is great also down here it may not officially be a recovery hook but it is a really beefy tie down that can probably be used as such at least unofficially this particular truck is equipped with a five foot bed it has a total payload capacity of 1 155 pounds it also has a tow hitch receiver and this can pull up to 6 400 pounds the bed is composite and it does come with a couple of lock boxes already installed if you need extra room you can take these out though it does take some tools it also has an ac power outlet that's good for up to 120 volts 400 watts not enough power for a power tool but good enough for a small accessory this even gets a full-size matching spare tire under the bed because this is a double cab that means there's not a lot of room in the second row let's just see how it adult fits oh that's tight i am at six foot one leg's torso proportionate my knees are rubbing against the driver's seat this is where i would have the seat if i were driving and it's obviously very tight here i do get two bottle holders which is nice and that's about it since this has a double cab that means it's not very big in the second row however i can also use these.

                         Let's see how does this work that goes forward that folds that needs to fold down doesn't that just fold down i thought that just folded down ah okay how does that fold down there we go wait now it's too high i don't know sure there's a better way to do this but that's not flat if i take it out completely can fold it flat put the headrest there look it's flat so there's extra ways that you can actually store gear in the second row here which is convenient if you don't plan on using this for passengers oh yeah this is familiar gotta put the key in oh yeah classic truck experience so what can i say about this truck that i haven't said before i've driven a lot of these we've done lots of reviews over the years this thing really hasn't changed that much the biggest differences are in what they include standard the thing that i can't get over with tacomas is the way that you sit your feet are really high your bottoms low and the wheel does not come forward very much so it's kind of a you know it's kind of an awkward seating position for some people other people love it so that's fine but you know with my build i just don't find this terribly comfortable.

                Which is weird because the forerunner feels great you have different seating position in that vehicle and it works better for me but still you know we have a really nice steering wheel here the gauge cluster isn't particularly fancy but it is very functional and here i can bop through all the settings including information about the vehicle mileage compass sirius xm we have the adaptive cruise control system which yeah this at least has adaptive cruise control as well as lane detection does not have lane centering though it's the older toyota system but it does work really well it has anti-collision blind spot warning and rear cross traffic alerts which is pretty cool one more over i can adjust the sensitivity for the pre-collision system as well as for lane detection so that's all pretty straightforward over here we have the really old infotainment system all of toyota and lexus's new vehicles are getting an all new system that is cloud connected this one is older but it is pretty easy to use and it has some decent features it will support apple carplay as well as android auto it has navigation built in it's not a terribly exciting navigation but i do like that it is not reliant on the cloud which means that you can go off-road and still have full map capability as well as breadcrumbing which is actually a really good feature so you can find your way out if you happen to get into you know a very difficult to get in and out of off-road area it's going into reverse and it turns into a pretty low resolution backup camera there are no tracking lines but there is a center point to help align for the hitch this does have towing capability with anti-sway there is no brake controller up here though below the infotainment system is both the air con which is dual zone which i like and then we also have the controller here for the part time four-wheel drive system yes part-time that means that you are going to be rolling in rear-wheel drive most of the time if you're on a slippery surface you can put it into four high and then if you get into challenging situations you can put it into four low and you do have to put it into neutral to switch that transfer case speaking of the transmission it is a six-speed automatic and it does have a sport mode as well as manual override okay what else we got lots of cup holders bins for stuff we have a hand brake right here which is cool no sunroof on this model the seats are pretty comfortable you'll note that they are wrapped in fabric here and they also have contrast stitching that is specific to the trail edition if you do move up to like a trd off-road premium you can get synthetic seats that are quite nice these ones i think will do and of course i have power adjustments on the driver's side passenger does not get those the rear window back there is power.

            I also get a usb a socket as well as a 12 volt the biggest difference between this vehicle and the trd off-road is what's up here or should i say what isn't up here we don't get a track we don't get mts we don't have crawl control those are some of the hardcore off-road features that really if you're just kind of lightly going off-road you don't really need however you do have a rear locking differential here which can get you through quite a lot that's don't underestimate the value of a rear locker these things are great so that's basically it this is a very straightforward truck now we are going to test this very limited off-road set on our off-road test course but first let's jump on the freeway and see how it drives recently we reviewed the trd pro version of the tacoma so i'm not going to belabor many of the things that are similar on this vehicle like the power this isn't particularly quick especially with a v6 and it is a 3.5 liter v6 and it's been around forever it is of course attached to this six-speed automatic transmission and this transmission is known to hunt in certain conditions that is it doesn't really find its gearing especially when going up inclines it's just a known issue with this vehicle but still there is something very charming about the tacoma truck and especially this truck because it has all of the off-road goodies without any of the advanced off-road features this is your basic sr5 it's lifted a little bit and has off-road protection and all-terrain tires i mean it's this is kind of like a classic truck you get a rear locker but you don't get any fancy off-road things like crawl control or mts system you don't even get a track on this which is pretty funny but for somebody looking for a more basic truck this might hit the sweet spot of course this has been upgraded with a number of features to make it almost as expensive as a trd off-road but you don't have to get all those features.

           I mean things like the parking sonars those were extra the rear cross traffic alerts that was extra the upgraded infotainment system yep you guessed it cost extra but those aren't really improvements on the truck they just are nice to have uh so if you did want a basic truck with just a key and you want a rear locker and raised with all terrains maybe this is the truck you've been waiting for on the freeway here it does have one thing standard that i really like and that is adaptive cruise control i just set my speed and i will slow down if the vehicle in front of me is driving slower than i am it's a very nice safety feature that said one thing to keep in mind is that this does not really have lane centering instead it just has a lane detection system so that it will notify me with a beep if i go over the line it's not particularly helpful honestly i usually just turn that off so right now i have cruise control set for the speed limit here and it's holding me at a pretty high 2500 rpm maybe 2400 rpm at 70 miles per hour up and now it's shifting now we're up to 3000 rpm these seats even though they are fabric they are very comfortable and i have just enough headroom here to feel comfortable as well yeah this is actually a pretty comfortable place to be i don't like having my legs quite this high and that's a complaint i always have in the tacoma i kind of hope they fix the ergonomics when this vehicle gets all new in the next year or so before we head up to our test hill we're going to pop off on the forest roads here to see how well this vehicle handles now this is a very easy vehicle to kind of like set up for the different scenarios because it has so few features i do have sport mode on the transmission which also allows for a manual override it is just a standard six-speed automatic transmission so nothing special there i do think it sounds pretty good and the looks of this truck are great this is i think one of the best looking trucks you can still buy today which is amazing considering how long this truck has been around so let's see manual override downshift to two floor it and shift come on four and even though you can manually shift.

                         It's not really a great experience so that's really only if you need it to force a specific gear for a specific scenario on the road here pavement it's a little bouncy it's a little wavy it definitely feels like it's kind of an off-road setup you get that kind of like you know c momentum it's like being out on a vessel on the ocean you get a little bit of roll in the corners uh you also get a little bit of bounce when you're going over things but that should pay dividends when we actually get into the tough stuff because you don't want firm suspension in those situations you know this is pretty fun to drive and we're gonna head back onto the freeway in a second here but first let's turn it around and try a zero to sixty to see how quick this setup is gonna line up we got drive and that's all i can do i'm still in real wheel drive mode three two one go a little slow off the line picking it up 40 50 and 60 and 7.93 seconds ouch this thing's slow okay now let's jump back on the freeway and continue our adventure driving for about an hour and the seat comfort not loving it i don't have a lot of support under my thighs and so i don't really have any place for my feet to go the issue is this steering wheel and how far i have to move the seat up to be able to get my hand in the correct position if the steering wheel would go back more it would help fix this situation but as it is my legs are both cramped up front as well as higher than.

                             I like them so i don't know if i'd really want to take this on a state to state trip that said the rest of the vehicle i mean steering wheel still feels great i'm just rolling along enjoying apple carplay with a cable and everything's going good yeah so next stop the test hill and we'll see exactly how good is a vehicle like this when it only has a rear locker that's it outside of the ergonomic issues the truck is pretty decent i like a lot of the stuff that it's doing here the knobs are very easy to use apple carplay yeah it uses a cable but it does work even the little steering buttons yeah and of course adaptive cruise control love that enough about the basics of the vehicle it's time to have some fun we're going to now turn off and hit the test hill well i just checked the course and it is a sloppy mess still we are getting the main road redone and uh that's not gonna happen for a couple more weeks and right now all the water is just draining and pooling on our test courses but that's okay because this is a truck it has 9.4 inches of ground clearance underbody protection and all-terrain tires it should get through this no problem so for setup so i have to engage four high first put my transmission into neutral and then i can engage for low can't get too excited okay put it into drive and let's go now there's no real features here really i mean the features are just built into the form and function of this truck we have a four low we have great approach angle we have a good departure angle break over is nice and of course i have that rear locker if i need it and i'm not going to turn it on until if and when it is necessary now for this first test we're going to go uh over the rattler and it is turned into a mud bog on the way up to the start of the course.

                So let's kind of roll through this i actually kind of like this this is cool but it does limit the type of vehicles we can take out here of course but still i like having a hard course okay just smooth throttle and we'll get onto the rocks okay we're onto the rocks ready for the next stage now this next section is mostly about making sure that there's enough ground clearance and then also just feeling how the throttle is and just how the truck in general gets over this challenging rock road and then when the rocks end there's a steep climb that's kind of a little bit muddy so that'll be kind of interesting a good test on the tires and how well these can clear themselves while spinning do i need a rear locker i don't think so let's do this without the locker and away we go just slowly crawl now because it's a low range not only does it multiply torque it allows for very slow crawling and we actually designed this road after uh the forest roads that we find in the cascade mountains they use the same type of rocks so this would not be that unusual of a road to find if you're going off the beaten path yeah no problem very easy to have a progressive throttle with that low range now the climb we're going to try to climb without a rear locker see how this does i would really like to see the trail in front of me but this has no trail cam also i have no inclinometer yeah not a lot of uh not a lot of toys in the tool kit okay let's do this now we're still in four low locker is not on and i'm gonna just try to maintain some momentum and throttle as i do this really tight right turn oh dude.

                                                                                                                             When it's wet that is a very difficult climb however i guess it's had enough time to dry out so you know it was really easy now we're going to head to the sidewinder have the same entrance here through the slop which you know it's not so bad that i need to engage a rear locker so that's nice of course i totally messed up my mirror there okay and up and over okay there is no hill descent control system here so i just get to do it with my foot no big deal though now in lieu of a hill descent control system i can switch into manual mode and go down to one and then it just uses engine compression to uh ease me down not quite the same thing as a hill descent control system though because that one would proactively use the four wheel brakes to keep the vehicle straight it's going to drive this is really mucky here check that approach angle i'm pretty good keep throttle in oh and up we go now the logs so this section here has a cross cut followed by a few logs and the logs are just on the left side of the track so the right wheel is actually not going to be going over the logs in fact it's a little muddy on the inside so uh yeah let's see what this does without a locker and we'll see if we need to enable it and the idea here is to see exactly when a locker is useful so the more i go to the right the harder the line and i'm going to try to keep it all the way over there now at this point we're probably seeing back wheels spin it's going to try to go smoothly over maintain a little momentum i have skid plate so i don't have to worry about if i ding a little bit man this is this is making it easy oh okay now we have back wheels spinning just digging us in this is where a rear locker is useful engage that wait for the light to quit flashing there okay now we have both wheels locked still stuck let's get a little momentum back forward oh yes a little rougher than i thought it was going to be i guess we dug down a little deep there now let's line up for the hardest part of the sidewinder yeah this is going to be tricky without any kind of mts or you know fancy off-road modes this is going to be hard but it gives us a really good opportunity to see exactly what the difference is between a vehicle that has those systems like the trd pro and the vehicle that doesn't have those systems in fact right now let's play the clip of the trd pro that we tested just a few weeks ago going up the same climb i'm going to go ahead and turn on mts and we're going to switch mts to mud and sand let's do mud and sand because we want wheel spin because i need to free up the lugs on these all-terrain tires so they can do work.

         So we got rear locked we have mts on and we should be able to just get right up get right up come on you got this you got this yeah okay you can see that it made a great job of it now let's see what it does without mts and without crawl control so i'm going to keep my rear locker on i'm in four low we have a lot more vegetation on this course than even just a couple weeks ago let's do it i'm just gonna use a little momentum to get up and uh a little bit of that traction in the back up we go we go oh man it's so much easier when it's just it has that level of moisture right now that it's kind of creating more of a cemented kind of layer previously if it's really dry then it's just sand when it's really wet it's just mud right now we kind of hit that sweet spot which makes this truck look awesome regular viewers will note that the comparable ford ranger tremor had major issues making the same climb last year but it is important to point out the difference in the road surface between the two tests today was our first run following several rain and sun weather cycles the ford made its attempt when the course was a lot softer and drier making it more difficult now i don't want to take away just how good the lift and locker setup is on this toyota tacoma sr5 trail but make sure to take into account road conditions when making any comparisons now let's wrap this up okay now that we've done that we've gone through all the things we just have the victory climb and i'm just gonna actually turn off that rear locker keep it in drive actually let's put it into four high neutral and i'm just gonna floor it you know what that that's we can do better we can do better let's let's do that again i had traction control on and it was just cutting power as i was climbing so this time we do the same thing but i'm turning traction control off let's get some wheel spin going traction off see if i hold it down does it go all the way now it's all the way off okay now we can have some fun and floor it it's not flooring it okay now.

        Let's put the transmission in sport we are gonna have some fun darn it okay sport first gear four high floor it huh there was it just didn't want to spin the wheels i was full to the floor wouldn't spin the wheels this is a truck that is very capable not only did it get through our course like it was nothing it also gave us confidence with that underbody protection with that extra ground clearance i knew i could increase my speed to entry of the difficult sections and not worry about damaging the vehicle plus articulation really put those wheels down so they had grip where grip was available now we had a little bit of an issue on the log but even when i locked that rear it still spun now that is a situation where something like mts actually would have been helpful because it would have stopped that spinning wheel and put all the torque to the wheel with grip but it was a challenging situation a lot of vehicles kind of struggle on that and again this one because of the underbody protection and the extra ground clearance i just charged over it and got over it just fine for driving something unique.

         I'm SYED FAIZAN thanks for Reading i hope you enjoyed this blog about the 2022 toyota tacoma trail edition 4x4 double cab be sure to like subscribe share blogs we make them for you and i hope you enjoy. #AMERICANSUV #ROADSIDE #TUFFSIDEVEHICLE