The 2024 Toyota Tacoma TRD Off-Road Finally Has the Right Stuff

This one is personal. Long before I wrote for Car and Driver, I worked at the Toyota Arizona Proving Grounds as an engineer tasked with chassis development and suspension tuning. My first big project was tuning an off-road package for the first-generation Tacoma that would be sold (unbeknownst to me) as the TRD Off-Road package. Many of the elements that make up this pickup truck's very popular package were put into place at that time: specially tuned front and rear springs, Bilstein monotube shock absorbers, and BFGoodrich tires, plus a lockable rear differential.

At the time, Bilstein's smallest 36-mm shocks (that's the internal piston's diameter) were all the bean counters would allow me. A Bilstein rep and I tuned them so they worked well on that smaller first-generation Tacoma, but as the truck grew in size and weight for the second and third generations, the 36-mm dampers were outgunned. I would have spoken up had I still been there when the second-generation was in development, but I had moved on to another job. I only realized how truly undersized those 36-mm shocks were on those newer trucks when I took a Honda Ridgeline to Death Valley alongside a third-generation Tacoma TRD Off-Road earlier in my automotive journalism career, and the Taco's rear shocks failed spectacularly on an ordinary (but admittedly long and severe) washboard dirt road.