Desert Test: Toyota TRD Pro Trucks - Gear Junkie
Sure, I’ve never driven a racing truck across the desert, but I certainly drive off-road on the way to fish, mountain bike, hunt and hike. So when Toyota asked me to travel with them from Palm Springs to Las Vegas “the hard way” through the Mojave Desert, I felt a tingle of excitement. The trucks look badass and spec out well, but how did they handle the “bat country” of the Nevada desert. In our day-long test, I and about 10 other writers roared along with Stewart and Toyota’s current Baja 1,000 drivers, Ryan Millen and Ted Moncure, very fast across the desert between Palm Springs on the way to Las Vegas. exhaust system that Toyota claims to add a bit of horsepower and low-end torque. On road it was smooth sailing, with simple and intuitive controls that any Toyota driver will recognize right away (I’m pretty sure it has the exact same cruise control setting lever as my 2001 Corolla. It is a light truck, and other testers complained that it didn’t perform well in soft sand (I didn’t drive it there). To me, the truck felt a little underpowered, but that could have been due to comparing it to the kick-in-the-pants feeling of driving the Tacoma and Tundra. Source: gearjunkie.com
