The Tacoma’s brakes also leave a lot to be desired. At least it will keep you from overcorrecting while rock crawling. Steering is vague and uncommunicative, and the amount of play in the steering is shocking, even while cornering. The TRD Off-Road includes an off-road-tuned suspension, which in other trucks often means a plusher - if wobbly - ride. Unladen and on pavement, the ride is stiff and bouncy, though having some weight in the bed helps a little. We’ve always said the Tacoma is happiest off-road, and like most of the rest of the truck, that hasn’t changed. Manual shift mode could fix this problem fairly easily by letting you shift back up, but it’s available only when driving in Sport mode, which limits the transmission to four gears - leaving you once again stuck in 4th on the highway. Sometimes the Tacoma would return to a higher gear on its own, and sometimes I had to employ a quick touch of the accelerator to remind the transmission a higher gear would be better. The lower gear and commensurate higher rpm were noisy and annoying. In situations where it needed to accelerate to maintain a desired speed, the transmission would kick down from 6th to 4th, reach the set speed, then hold 4th gear. Interestingly (and frustratingly), the automatic transmission displayed some aggravating behavior while using the Tacoma’s adaptive cruise control. The Tacoma can lose steam in higher-speed driving once the revs settle, and the transmission won’t always kick down willingly to get going again. Power is available for passing and merging, but it doesn’t come easily. The V-6 is noisy and sounds strained under hard acceleration. Our test vehicle had a six-speed automatic transmission, but a six-speed manual is also available. A smaller 2.7-liter four-cylinder is also available. Power for the Tacoma I drove came from a naturally aspirated 3.5-liter V-6 that makes 278 horsepower and 265 pounds-feet of torque. Whether the newer, smaller unibody Ford Maverick will also give the Tacoma a run for its money remains to be seen. The Tacoma competes against traditional body-on-frame mid-size pickups like the Chevrolet Colorado, Ford Ranger, GMC Canyon, Jeep Gladiator and Nissan Frontier, as well as the unibody Honda Ridgeline. Related: 2022 Toyota Tundra Review: Better Where It Counts The automaker just gave the full-size Tundra pickup a complete redesign, and the Tacoma needs to be next in line. The Tacoma’s not all bad, but using one as a daily driver made me wonder just how much longer Toyota can keep getting away with giving the Tacoma special editions and new paint colors but no meaningful upgrades. But even I had a hard time finding something enjoyable about driving the Toyota Tacoma, a 2021 pickup truck that really shouldn’t feel like a vehicle more than 20 years its senior. ![]() I’m on the record saying I still find old-school - or even downright old - vehicles enjoyable to drive even as competitors modernize driving a 1997 Toyota 4Runner for more than a decade will do that to a person. ![]() Versus the competition: It’s hard to think of a single thing the Tacoma does better than its competitors … except sell. The verdict: Class-leading sales continue to gloss over its flaws, but how much longer can Toyota go without modernizing the Tacoma? ![]() 2021 Toyota Tacoma | photo by Christian Lantry
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