Men's Journal

The sport-ute has been reviled, rejected, and replaced. And as the unrepentantly rugged new Toyota 4Runner proves, that was the best thing that could have happened to the SUV.

By Ezra Dyer

I pull up to the Caltrans Snowchain checkpoint and roll down the window. To the right, a long line of cars and 18-wheelers are parked, getting their tires wrapped by entrepreneurial chain jockeys. To my left, a miserable-looking fellow inspects each vehicle to determine whether it’s worthy of continuing on up the mountain, into a blizzard. The checkpoint arbiter clocks my shiny new Toyota 4Runner Trail, with its big-ass Dunlop GrandTrek tires and towering ground clearance, and throws me a thumbs-up. I’m good to try my luck on the Donner Summit on a night so nasty that the other side of I-80 going into Nevada* is closed because of a dozen-car pileup. I inform my friend Scott, riding shotgun, that cannibalism is an option if the Cheetos run out.

It’s not ideal, driving the Donner Summit in a blizzard. The climb is steep and relentless, as is the snow: We’re talking 20 to 50 feet per year. (When the snow finally melted around the Donner Party’s camp in 1847, there were tree stumps 22 feet high.) But if you’ve got to do it, my ride is certainly a strong choice — as evidenced by the fact that every third vehicle in the Sierras seems to be a 4Runner, one of the few remaining truck-based SUVs in a crossover-heavy world.

It wasn’t always so. Ten, 20 years ago, SUVs roamed the Earth like steel T. rexes. At first they were merely trucks with covered beds, rude workhorses driven by bearded loners who needed a roof to keep their guns dry. Soon the rest of the country noticed that they were driven by rugged individualists. To announce their own individuality, everyone else bought one. We had millions of people driving off-roaders everywhere but off-road. SUVs began to evolve, to soften. So car companies invented the crossover — a jacked-up station wagon that could exhibit some self-control at the pump.

And you know what? The crossover is the best thing that ever happened to the sport-ute. Now that it doesn’t have to be all things to all people, the SUV can return to its rock-crawling, kidney-denting, backwoods ways. Toyota has taken full advantage of this opportunity with the new 4Runner Trail (base price: $35,700), cramming it with enough off-road-centric tech to give Jeep fanboys self-esteem issues.

As I pull away from the checkpoint, I grab the stubby lever next to the shifter to engage 4WD. No automatic all-wheel drive or pansy buttons here — you jam gears together with your own hairy knuckles, the electronic rear differential locking into action. Overhead there are switches and dials for the sundry electronic off-road helpers that Toyota pulled from the Land Cruiser and put into the 4Runner Trail (see below). You’d have to do something exceptionally silly to get one stuck. Then again, when you own an off-roader designed to turn the Rubicon into Route 66, you’re honor bound to do stupid things with it.

Like, say, driving the Donner Summit while it’s wearing a thick blanket of snow. The Trail’s 4.0-liter V-6 growls its coarse displeasure with the climb, its 270 horsepower paying a major vig to the high elevation. (Even at sea level, the 4Runner’s high center of gravity and low-revving motor convey the message that this is a slow-and-steady type of beast.) We press on through switchbacks, past a truck inching its way up the mountain with tire chains wailing, past a car stuffed into a snowbank, past the John Deere graders that plow the road. It is profoundly satisfying to use a vehicle like this in its element. Let it snow: We’ve got 9.6 inches of ground clearance before we hit the skid plates.

We crest the pass, and I’m feeling pretty macho — until we run up on a guy driving a Highlander Hybrid. With no tire chains. Okay, so maybe the 4Runner Trail is overqualified even for the type of weather that shuts down an interstate. And maybe that guy in the Highlander made the more responsible, mature choice in vehicle — but there’s surrender in the crossover. He’s admitted that he will never conquer a rocky canyon trail or plow through Baja’s sand dunes in search of the perfect surf break. For the few who still want to, bearded loners or otherwise, it’s nice to have the option.

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This article originally appeared in the April 2010 issue of Men’s Journal.

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*This portion of the text has been corrected. In the print version of this story, we accidentally stated that I-80 went into Oregon. We apologize for the error.