Which factory off-roader should you drive out of the dealer lot and straight into the wilderness? We crawled 10
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00:00We just made camp at over 10,000 feet in the Eastern Sierra, and behind us are the three
00:14incredible 4x4s that got us here.
00:34Jason tell us about the three vehicles that brought us here.
00:37For this adventure we picked three of the most capable SUVs that are on the market today.
00:42The Ford Bronco Badlands, Sasquatch, Jeep's Wrangler Rubicon, and Toyota's all-new Land
00:50Cruiser.
00:51Rubicon is the Rubicon 4xe?
00:55That's true.
00:56It's the 4xe plug-in hybrid, and we have been cruising the trails in battery electric mode
01:00all day, and it is fabulous.
01:04By fabulous you mean loud and exciting, right?
01:06No, quite the opposite.
01:08The 4xe in electric mode is just wonderful because you can roll down the windows and
01:13listen to nature.
01:14You can hear the wind rustling in the trees, you can hear the birds.
01:17The loudest noise the vehicle makes, the rocks under your tires.
01:20So we live in an age where you can have the rumble of a V8 under the hood of a Wrangler,
01:25and you can also wheel in just about complete silence.
01:28And they both have the same amount of torque as well.
01:30The Wrangler 4xe has 470 pound-feet of torque, just like the 392 V8.
01:35It really is amazing.
01:36There's no real functional difference in capability either.
01:40I mean, they have the same clearance, the same approach and departure angles.
01:44You're not getting anything different.
01:46Just one makes an amazing noise, and one of them makes no noise.
01:50Two different powertrains and the same authentic Jeep Wrangler experience.
01:54We love it.
01:55And if we're speaking about hybrids, the Toyota Land Cruiser is a hybrid as well, but it's
01:59a totally different type of hybrid system.
02:02It is.
02:03It's a complete and integrated.
02:04There's actually not even a screen or anything.
02:06There's no badge.
02:07There's nothing to tell you that it's a hybrid if you don't know what the badge on the back
02:11actually means.
02:12But it's also not like a Prius.
02:14This one, it's much more similar to what's in the Tundra and previous Toyota trucks that
02:21have gone hybrid in that they've sandwiched electric motors in between the engine and
02:25the transmission.
02:26So you get a lot of help from it, but you don't go like cruising along in like silent
02:31electric mode like you do on the Wrangler.
02:33No, but with only two liters under the hood, this engine still puts out better than 450
02:38pound-feet of torque, which is phenomenal, really.
02:42And it's still like the Land Cruiser you know, even though it's a new slightly smaller package,
02:47it's still permanent full-time four-wheel drive.
02:49It still has the locking diffs and disconnecting sway bar and all the features that you wanted
02:55out of it.
02:56It just looks different, is a bit smaller and costs less now.
03:01Scott, you say that this new Land Cruiser is every bit as good as the other Land Cruisers.
03:06However, there's been a lot of chatter about the tires.
03:10Yeah, every bit is maybe saying a little too much.
03:13You can see just looking at the right now, these tires are not as aggressive as the ones
03:18on the Jeep and the Ford.
03:20They are just a more street-focused tire.
03:24And it also has the least amount of ground clearance here.
03:28It's actually slightly less than the old Land Cruiser.
03:31So your breakover angles aren't quite as good either.
03:34And we're talking small differences, but it is just on paper, technically the least capable
03:41vehicle of the three, although it did get here.
03:44Yeah.
03:45And thankfully on the trails, it just took a little more attention, a little more finesse
03:50than say the Bronco with the 35-inch Goodyears.
03:54You could just bash through things with that vehicle, but the Land Cruiser, it did everything
03:59we asked of it.
04:00And the tires worked well.
04:01They didn't slip.
04:02They didn't slide.
04:04We didn't cut one.
04:05I mean, really, is it really a detriment to it?
04:09I don't know.
04:10I mean, right, Jared?
04:11I didn't use the lockers on the Toyota.
04:13You went through like the hardest section in the Toyota.
04:15While I was driving, you saw the tires come way up and start waving, and I did not activate
04:22the lockers.
04:23I was just steady on that throttle, and I gave that vehicle plenty of chances to stumble.
04:30And it didn't.
04:31It pulled itself right through some pretty gnarly washouts, got itself over the rocks,
04:35and it might have kissed the skid plate here or there and used the rock rails, but it got
04:41through the trails.
04:42It did the job.
04:43That is the thing.
04:44It did use its underbody protection, I think, more than the other two did.
04:48But that's also what it's there for.
04:50Yeah, Toyota adds a really robust skid plate package to the bottom of the Land Cruiser,
04:54and this first edition comes with rock rails, which we actually didn't use a whole lot,
04:58but when we did, we were thankful they were there.
05:00Or you just put giant tires on it, like Ford over here, and you just drive over everything.
05:06I mean, we were kind of like choosing the dumb line, we were calling it, like especially
05:10with the Jeep and the Ford.
05:11You could tell that you get in those ones, you're like, well, maybe I will drive over
05:14that rock just because.
05:16Driving the Bronco was a completely different experience than driving the Land Cruiser.
05:20Like, Jason, you said something about the Bronco comes alive after you're on the bumps
05:25if you're going a certain speed.
05:26Yeah, the Bronco, of all these three vehicles, likes to go fast.
05:31It has the Haas suspension on it, which in Ford terms means Bilstein monotubes with reservoirs,
05:38which we all know and love because they do great at speed.
05:42So on the washboard roads, it really appreciated a little more speed, which was easy to do
05:47because of the Bronco's go-kart system.
05:49So you could just quickly turn the dial, put the thing into Baja, it knew what settings
05:52it wanted, it moved it into four high, it disabled the traction control, it alters the
05:56throttle position, and it's ready to rock.
05:58Then you slow down, get to the rocks, put it in rock crawl mode, and it does the same
06:02thing.
06:03It puts it into four low, disconnects your sway bar, engages your locker, and it just,
06:07the Bronco just knows what it needs to do when it needs to do it.
06:12It's super friendly to like, especially someone who's new to off-roading, just twist the dial
06:16until the screen says whatever you're looking at out the windshield, and you'll probably
06:21be okay.
06:22The Toyota's a bit more complicated getting through its modes and things, figuring out
06:25where you, because you have to press a certain button and then twist the knob to get to
06:28the off-road modes because it's different than the up-drive modes.
06:31And then the Jeep is just old school, like you pull the lever and then, you know, you
06:36decide when you feel like having, you know, lockers or disconnecting the sway bar or whatever.
06:41It's all on you.
06:42So I want to get this straight.
06:43Each one of these vehicles has four wheel drive, it has four high, and it also has a
06:47four low.
06:48Does each one of these vehicles have a, have drive modes that I can put it into?
06:53Technically, yes, because the Jeep does have its off-road plus mode.
06:56It's a hybrid.
06:57So you can have it in hybrid mode, you can have it in pure electric mode, and you can
06:59have it in battery save mode where the engine charges the battery or keeps the battery at
07:04a high level of charge to use later.
07:07So technically it does have modes, but not like the way we think of it in the other two
07:11trucks that are more about like, okay, you have your street driving modes and you've
07:14got your off-road modes and each off-road mode is customized to a different type of
07:18terrain.
07:20The Jeep's sort of like, you can play with how the powertrain behaves and then you tell
07:23us when you want to like really like screw around and not broke.
07:26That's about it.
07:27So we have, the Bronco has GOAT modes, you have multi-terrain select in the Land Cruiser,
07:32and in the Jeep Wrangler 4xe, we have that stick shifted transfer case.
07:36It's worth noting as well that the Bronco and the Land Cruiser also have modes that
07:41will do it for you.
07:43Ford has its trail control, Toyota has their crawl control, where you can put it in a mode,
07:48set it at a speed, and it will manage the throttle input and the braking while you
07:53have to focus on the steering.
07:55The Jeep is a lot more manual.
07:57You steer, you throttle all the time.
08:06At Motor Trend, we're always looking for new ways to push vehicles to their limits.
08:10Not just on the road, but on all kinds of incredible off-road trails.
08:14From rock crawling to multi-day overland adventures, we use OnX Off-Road from start to finish,
08:21and even when stuff goes sideways.
08:23No cell reception?
08:24No problem.
08:26Just download a detailed base map before you set off, and OnX Off-Road's GPS will keep
08:31track of where you've been and where you're going.
08:34For land use boundaries, places of interest, thousands of trails graded by difficulty,
08:39and more, we use OnX Off-Road every time we get out and about.
08:44If you want to discover places like the ones we explored today, scan the QR code or click
08:50the link in the bio to learn more about OnX Off-Road.
08:55Before we even could get to the trails, we had a few hundred miles of highway driving
08:59to get through.
09:00And if these vehicles are well-rounded adventure machines, they've got to play nice on the
09:04highway too.
09:05The whole idea here, right, is that you want to load up the family and all your camping
09:09gear and stuff and go out for a weekend in the mountains, right?
09:13Well, most of that drive is going to be getting here, and you've got to give it to the Toyota
09:18there that, like, okay, yeah, you can't blow all the roof panels off, but it is the quietest
09:22inside when you're doing 70-plus miles an hour on the freeway.
09:25What kind of fuel mileage were we getting on the highway?
09:27Well, it wasn't great.
09:29I mean, yes, two of these were hybrids, but they were self-reporting.
09:32I mean, this one, I think the Toyota was the champion, and it was, I think it got to 17.1
09:37miles per gallon.
09:38It's no Prius.
09:40This powertrain is for making torque.
09:42It's not for getting good fuel economy.
09:44But it was the best of the three, so got that going for it.
09:51After driving these 4x4s for a few hours on the highway, what are some things that worked
09:54on the inside?
09:55Was one more comfortable than another?
09:57I think the Toyota is the most car-like of the three.
10:00They're all body-on-frame trucks, but it does have a normal solid roof.
10:04There's nothing special going on.
10:06The doors don't come off of it.
10:07It doesn't do any of those tricks that are introduced challenges in the other vehicles.
10:12So yeah, the wind noise is quieter inside, and there's more insulation in the ceiling.
10:17Like the cloth roof on the Wrangler, like the sun comes, like you feel the heat coming
10:22through it.
10:23So it gives you those sort of nice parts, but yeah, but it also means you can't take
10:28the doors off, but you can't do the fun stuff either.
10:30And that one has the smallest, most road-oriented tires, too, versus 35-inch tires from the
10:36Bronco, which are all-terrain.
10:38It's also quieter inside on the highway when you don't have so much tire roar, and your
10:44vehicle isn't quite as square as the other two, and you don't get as much wind noise.
10:49So if you're only going to be doing highway commuting, the Toyota makes a pretty good
10:52name for itself, but there are trade-offs in that.
10:56The Bronco and the Wrangler were, they are what they are.
10:59They're going to be a little bit louder on the highway, and you can fix that with the
11:02Wrangler by not getting the SkyOne touch top.
11:05It's the trade-off.
11:06They're solid roof panels, and it's a little bit less money, and it'll be a little bit
11:09quieter.
11:10You're not going to get away from the heat problem.
11:12As we noticed with the Bronco, too, with its removable panels, they still radiate a lot
11:16of heat, especially out here in the hot summer.
11:19But, you know, neither of them are going to be incredibly loud.
11:23They're not uncomfortable.
11:24After 300 miles in them, nobody's fatigued, but you do start to notice, especially in
11:31the Jeep, the tires will follow the grooves in the road.
11:35You'll get a little more of that live axle wander that you've got to deal with, and as
11:40we were driving in high winds yesterday, it was pushing around the Wrangler and the Bronco
11:45more than the Land Cruiser.
11:48Not enough to be a problem, but it's there.
11:50It's a thing that exists, and it's just part of it.
11:54You also notice, we spent a lot of time in the Wrangler, how narrow the body is compared
11:58to what we're used to in other vehicles, like the door's right up next to you.
12:02You sit fairly close to the person in the passenger seat, and you don't necessarily
12:07think about it in the moment, but especially if you go sit in your friend's Bronco, and
12:13you say, how much wider it feels, it gives you a sense of like, man, it feels like there's
12:17a lot of space inside the Bronco, and you've got room to stretch out, and you're not crammed
12:21in there, and the thing is, they're not technically that much wider or narrower than each other.
12:26The track width on the Jeep is pretty wide, but it's the bodywork itself that's pulled
12:31in, and it gives it that classic Jeep shape with the fenders sticking out, but it also
12:37means that I think that's pretty clear the least interior space for people or cargo.
12:41Yeah, and we notice that too when loading up our camping gear for this adventure, is
12:45that the back of the Wrangler doesn't give you a lot of room for activities, whereas
12:50the Bronco and the Land Cruiser, they have a much larger cargo area behind the back row,
12:56and even with the middle row seats folded down, you get a lot more space than in the
12:59Wrangler.
13:01And that's very important too, because if you are bringing the family with you, you
13:05might have people in the back seats, in which case you can't just fold them down and throw
13:09everything on top of them.
13:10Like, you really start to need that extra space, and then if you guys are putting things
13:14on the roofs of them to, you know, make up for the space that you don't have, well now
13:17it's harder to take your roof panels off, and that's half the reason you got these in
13:21the first place, so you can take the roof off.
13:23So you're saying there are certain trade-offs you have to make if you want more off-road
13:27driving capability versus manners when you're carrying friends and family down the road.
13:31But hey, again, all three of them still got here, despite that, so.
13:35They are all still up here at over 10,000 feet.
13:38After a pretty rugged day of riding the trails, this wasn't an easy trail.
13:42Bronco and the Wrangler have a lot of tools that are really focused on crazy, hardcore
13:47rock crawling trails.
13:49We didn't really put these vehicles to the ultimate test.
13:52This is probably about, I mean, there's brand new trucks here.
13:55This trail is probably about as far as somebody who just bought one of these is going on their
14:00first camping trip.
14:02They haven't started modifying it yet.
14:03They haven't changed anything on it.
14:05They want to get out into the woods.
14:07That's about as much bashing of my brand new, quite expensive truck that I really want to
14:12do before I've, you know, considered how I want to build it.
14:15Because at some point, if you really want to start, you know, bashing rocks, you might
14:20want to think about building an older truck that you're not so, you know, attached to
14:25versus one that you just took out a very big loan for.
14:28And there's no denying the popularity right now of this backcountry adventure travel that
14:35people are doing.
14:36And these are some of the most popular vehicles in that genre today.
14:40Like people will buy the Wrangler and the Bronco and never go to a rock garden and never
14:44rock crawl it.
14:45That's not what they want to do.
14:46They want to do exactly what we're doing here.
14:48And I think we really got to talk about what these things cost because this is not a, it's
14:53not the old days of like, these were just basic trucks that, you know, didn't cost anything.
14:57Like the cheapest vehicle here is 69, basically $70,000 for that Bronco.
15:04And that is not the highest spec Bronco.
15:06You can get a bigger engine, you can get, you know, more off-road capability, like even
15:11more than it already has.
15:13And then it only goes up from there.
15:15So these are some expensive four by fours.
15:17You're paying a lot of money to take a four by four down a decently difficult trail.
15:23In Jeep's defense, the options package of the winch and the bumper, they add up and
15:27the four by E is not the least expensive Wrangler you can get.
15:31When the Land Cruiser first edition, it's the high spec is $77,000.
15:35And you can knock that down by, I think down into the high sixties.
15:41If you get the standard model that it loses, you know, it has weaker tires on it, which
15:47these weren't anything special to begin with, although they did perform very well.
15:51When it loses some of the niceties, you get a cloth interior, like it, it dumbs it down
15:55a bit, but it still has all the same off-road hardware in it.
15:59So in theory it performs nearly as well as, at least as well as the tires will let it
16:05to do the same sort of things that this one does.
16:09So that brings us back to why are we here?
16:12We're not here to go crazy rock crawling.
16:14We're not mud bogging, but this also isn't just a highway only road trip.
16:18We're out here to drive a trail that anyone should be able to do in a reasonable stock
16:23four by four.
16:24And that's what we did.
16:25Each one of these four by fours got us here so they can all do it at which one did it
16:30best based on how much you want to pay and which features and functions and toys each
16:35one of these has.
16:36I think we've got to give it to the Ford.
16:40Not just because it's the cheapest, not just because it's the most capable because the
16:44Jeep was probably as, as outfitted, probably a bit more capable, especially with the winch
16:49on it, but it just does everything that we wanted to do for this thing, right?
16:54If you wanted to load up the family, go camping for a week and you want a reasonably challenging
16:58trail, but you know, not something you actually need a winch for and that's something that's
17:03going to throw the family around and throw all your stuff off the roof or anything like
17:07it just kind of does it all right and it makes it easy for you.
17:11It makes it, it takes the stress out of it.
17:13You don't have to worry about, you know, bashing it on things like it's, it's got a lot of
17:17capability right out of the box that, you know, the other two can, can match it in some
17:22ways, but like the Toyota, you feel like you have to be a little more careful about, about
17:27the trail and about the line you pick and the Jeep just doesn't have a space that the
17:31Ford just kind of gives you everything you need.
17:33If the Ford Bronco is our first choice, it's the battle for second place now.
17:37That's a really hard battle because there are two really good vehicles.
17:42However, based on the criteria that we've laid out of this back country travel, we feel
17:48that the Land Cruiser has it over the Wrangler just slightly because it has the quieter,
17:55more spacious interior.
17:56It, it's very well rounded vehicle and it did everything that we asked it to do and
18:02maybe a little more even, and it did it for a lot less money than the Jeep did.
18:08Could you take the Jeep on the Rubicon?
18:09Of course, but that's not what we're doing.
18:12This was not a rock crawling adventure.
18:14This was, can we get to a pretty cool campsite in comfort with a few people and a lot of
18:21camping gear?
18:23And we did push that Land Cruiser through everything the other 4x4s did and it did it
18:28and it really didn't struggle.
18:34And there you have it.
18:35After two incredible days on the trail, the Ford Bronco was the right truck for this adventure
18:40through the Eastern Sierra.