I Bought a 2024 Toyota Sequoia TRD Pro!

This is the

2024

Toyota seia TRD Pro and it is actually my seoa TRD Pro. Of the five full-size SUVs currently on the market, there is general agreement that the Toyota seoa is the fourth best and I now have one opinion about Nissan. Armada today I am going to explain what led me to buy this vehicle and since I have not yet reviewed one of these, I will also show you its surroundings and some of its peculiarities and characteristics. Today's video is brought to you for cars and bid on my online enthusiast car auction site that recently sold this and this and this and this and this very well.

I'm going to start this video before getting into the final quirks and features with an explanation of why I'm seemingly rational. human being would buy a vehicle the size of a research laboratory with camouflage seats so let me explain this all started several months ago when I decided to simplify my life. I've already mentioned it in several videos and on our podcasts and our live shows, but I wanted to make life easier at my busiest shopping time. I had nine cars, two of which were within 3,000M of my main base and the average age of my vehicle fleet was 20 years, so there were a lot of cars and a lot of needs.

It was a lot to deal with and I wanted to make my life easier, so for the last 3 months I've been selling a lot of my cars, as you've probably noticed if you watch my channel. I sold my Mercedes benz class to Kevin from New York I love you Kevin. I sold my old yellow Land Rover Defender. I sold my Toyota L Cruiser and I didn't mention this on the channel, but I sold my wife's Volvo XC60 crossover. Four vehicles sold in 90 days, just getting stuff out the door. and simplify my life and it felt so good to not have to deal with all those cars now as much as I would have loved to sell all those cars and replace them with nothing and really simplify my existence, unfortunately that was not possible.

Selling those four cars meant that I had a gap in my family vehicle situation and I needed to fill that gap and my particular needs for this vehicle that I had to get were incredibly narrow, they were incredibly particular and specific and difficult to get. a car, this is how I ended up with this Behemoth camo seat situation, so this is what I needed, let me explain the city in normal driving use. I have a Mercedes-Benz E450 SUV that I adore, love and still use every time I need to go somewhere with my wife, my family, my children, that is my usual daily driver vehicle in the city, my wife and I We share, we love it, it's a fantastic car, however when our families come to visit us this is not realistic. using the Mercedes van is pretty tight with two adults, then two kids in car seats and then two visiting parents or siblings or whatever it ends up being now that the Mercedes van has a third row seat in the cargo area with belts security that people can sit, but there's a lot of space back there and it's not realistic that as adult human beings they want to sit in the seat of especially elderly parents, that's just not going to happen, so in recent months, when parents have come to visit us, we had to take two cars almost every time we wanted to go somewhere outside our neighborhood.

You want to try a different place to play a few neighborhoods away. Well, you're driving two cars there and it seemed wasteful and silly to be in that situation. everyone piles into two vehicles which was perfect in California and I really didn't want to do that anymore so I wanted to find something that could comfortably carry four adults and two small children in car seats plus a giant stroller which is pretty easy now of getting a giant thing with all-terrain tires, so as you can imagine, there was a little more to it than that. The other thing about my drought is that it not only replaces my wife's Volvo XC60 but also the Toyota Land Cruiser. that I recently sold cars and bids.

I had used that Land Cruiser on all kinds of crowded off-road adventures when I was on the East Coast and the SEOA needed to be able to do that too. so I needed something that was big enough for a lot of people and capable of off-road driving and I planned to drive this car every summer across the country from California to the east coast and back, so I needed something that was relatively comfortable with a good driver assistance. technology and that could easily, simply and reliably make that trip across the country without breaking a sweat, this was a bit of a controversial requirement because it eliminated almost all electric cars, so when I asked this question on Twitter, that was that requirement.

The controversial Twitter has now become a bastion of robots and people obsessed with Elon Musk and they were all pushing electric cars and specifically Tesla. You can drive cross country in a Tesla, but not really the way I drive cross country. I have made this cross. I have adventured in the country many times for several years and when I do I try very hard. I can get from San Diego to Washington DC and about 2 and a half days last year when I was driving back from the East Coast I did it from Manhattan in From New York City to Oklahoma in a single day, well I go I want Going and getting an electric car would probably add at least a day of extra time on both sides of this trip, which is another day of roads, hotels, and bad roads. food just so I can have the privilege of driving a Rivano, no thanks, and that assumes you can find Chargers all over the country, which, frankly, is great, if at least given the current state of infrastructure, with those requirements it would be big enough to have at least six off. -Easy off road capable cross country driving with good driver assistance tech, there really weren't that many options, the Chevy Tahoe Z71, very large and off road capable, but Chevy doesn't offer super cruise on that model, same deal with the Ford Expedition kimberline and Ford's blue teams the Range Rover being too ridiculously expensive, the Mercedes G Wagon doesn't have enough seats, the Mercedes GLS doesn't go off road, nothing seems to tick all my boxes except for a small group Of cars, obviously, the Sequoia fits. all my requirements and the only other cars I found that met all my requirements were the Jeep Grand wagon ear and the Jeep Grand Cherokee L and I seriously considered them, specifically the Grand Cherokee L.

I got one and tested it and reviewed it. And I finally decided that although the Jeep has some real benefits, especially in a smaller size, I think it looks better, it's cheaper. I just don't trust a Chrysler product right now. I've heard some real horror stories about people who

bought

them. new Grand Cherokee Ls and various problems they've had and since I'm driving this across the country to some kind of remote Spa, I really don't want to be stranded anywhere dealing with the problems that can arise when you own a Chrysler, so the Sequoia emerged as the obvious choice, especially since I also think the Seoa has more off-road capability than the Jeep, even if the Jeep didn't have reliability issues that have now pushed the Toyota over the edge.

It's worth noting that the Seoa has its own well-documented problems that have been covered in reviews of this car, which have generally been pretty mediocre to positive, but not absolutely brilliant. The reviews of the Sequoia haven't been entirely positive and I'll cover some of that in a minute. The other thing that made me think about buying a Seoa is that I have laughed at the Seoa in the past in a very public way. Al I've said that if you have a Land Cruiser and I've had a couple, the Sequoia is below you is not on the same level and I felt that for a long time, but Toyota has totally changed their lineup and frankly what shocked me recently is that the seoa is now the Land Cruiser, this one had a sticker price of over $882,000 and is the most off-road vehicle of all Toyota SUVs, that is the Land Cruiser.

For my entire life, the Land Cruiser has been Toyota's most expensive off-road SUV, but now that position is taken by the Sequoia, and there's actually a new Land Cruiser coming out. a much lower price and a smaller size located in a different place in the Toyota lineup if you want to buy the Land Cruiser of the old days, the high-end Toyota, frankly, that's the Sequoia now and specifically the TRD Pro with all its functions turned off. - road stuff so that's one explanation of how I ended up with the seia TRD Pro and I have to say it feels amazing to replace a 1997 car, a 1998 car, a 2013 car and a 2018 car for vehicles with a new car from

2024

.

The average vehicle age has increased significantly on the cars in my fleet and there is much less to deal with. Yes, this thing is a ridiculously huge sized Behemoth, but a new huge Behemoth still has a lot less things to deal with and think about than. four smaller, older vehicles, which is what I had before, so I personally think it was a good decision. I'm sure you'll tell me I wasn't in the comments below and now let me show you the quirks and features of my Sequoia. Start with the white exterior color, which looks boring, but a lot of thought went into it.

Toyota only offers the sequa TRD Pro in three colors, white, gray or black. That's all. Now every year they also offer a special TRD color, which is something brilliant it really is. great and I loved the previous TRD Pro colors but for the Sequoia in 23 it was bright orange and in 24 it was kind of a dull orange and as much as I really loved the 2015 4Runner TRD Pro orange color it just isn't right for this one. Vehicle number one is very orange and number two is for a 4Runner for someone who is like 26 years old and takes his dog to the mountains to hike.

I don't want to drive with my family in a bright orange vehicle, so white was the choice I felt it was the best of the remaining colors, now talking about the appearance of this vehicle, it is annoying, it has camouflaged fenders on the wheel arches and they look absolutely ridiculous, this is so far from my personality, it's just crazy and even worse, it has camouflage seats. it's factory and unfortunately there's no way around it, you can't get a TRD Pro without wheel arches and camo seats, it seems absurd, but now I'm a guy with a car that has camo seats, now of course I could having gotten a regular Sequoia and not TRD Pro, but if you can get over the stupid camo stuff, this truck adds a lot if you go off road frequently, which I do on the one hand, you get these cool wheels, yeah that's right, You also have off-roading.

Look at the road suspension there, you can see it's red and that means it's tough and durable, no it actually has a pretty significant off-road suspension setup and obviously these all-terrain tires are called Falcon Wild Peaks which sounds made up , but that's what they are. re called, you also have the TRD light bar on the grill, which will actually be surprisingly useful for me because I drive in rural areas with a lot of deer, in fact, I hit a deer with my previous car, My Land Cruiser, and so on be. It's nice to be able to see a little more, but the real benefit of the TRD Pro sequa is the off-road gadgets.

The Toyota Multi-Terrain Select system and the Toyota Inching Control system are fantastic and have gotten me out of some pretty serious jams. in the past and I'm thrilled to have it on my new car so it can do the same for me in the future. Now it's worth noting that you can get all of these things if you buy an off-road Sequoia TRD. It also comes with most of these features but what I found is that it's only about $11,12,000 cheaper and I think the pro will hold its value significantly better in the long run and frankly it's cooler and going up inside there are more curves and features to discuss on the one hand.

What I really like is the technology in this car. Toyota isn't really a high-tech manufacturer, but they do a good job of refining technology that already exists and this car is a good example. The central touch screen is perfect, it's huge, it's super high resolution, it's tremendously easy. to move intuitive, responsive, frankly, it matches perfectly with how I think I want touch screens to be up. I also love that the rearview mirror has a camera function. This is especially important to me because I'm going to hoard this. thing full of people, car seats, dogs and all kinds of cargo and other equipment that can't be seen from behind without this camera.

This is a feature. I wish my Mercedes truck had my other daily driver car and I'm glad I can have it here now That said, one kind of ridiculous niggle about this car's technology is the gauge cluster display situation. Has a group of indicatorsFull screen and the left panel is very configurable, showing the track you are playing and displaying vehicle information. all kinds of different things you can stop there, but the right panel is not configurable at all. You have the option to choose between three absolutely useless things, one is the angle of your vehicle, for example how lean or rolling it is on trails, okay, another is your turbo boost, if you want a boost gauge on your SUV giant familiar, you can see it on the right panel and the last one is like an engine temperature gauge, but it's already displayed elsewhere on the screen so it's just duplicated and those are the only options you have.

I have for the right screen, of course, I want it to show me the music I'm listening to so I can have the trip odometer information on the other side, but that's not available. It's absolutely ridiculous, no one who designed this screen has ever used it. That said, beyond a few other good things here, I love the driver assistance technology in this new Sequoia capacitive touch steering wheel that keeps its lane tremendously well, very smooth when braking and accelerating, will not change lanes automatically and if you It tries to stop completely, you have to touch a button to start again, which is annoying, but the operation of the system is smoother and better than even my Mercedes truck.

It's a great system, better than almost everything else out there and that was a big priority for me, finding a car with good driver assistance technology. The Jeep Grand Sherokee L has even better driver assistance technology and it's sad to lose some of what it offers, but it's almost as good and it's a fantastic system that will help me stay in traffic here in Southern California and at home. cross-country trip every summer as well as for the back seats. I can see the captain's chairs behind, the camouflage captain's chairs, unfortunately, but they're there and that's okay.

I like the fact that it has built-in sunshades for the second row seats and it even has built-in sunshades for the third row seats. which is a pretty big Flex, if you have a lot of baby passengers they will appreciate it and in fact I appreciate it and next we move on to the cargo area which is the main source of complaints about this car when you read or look at reviews. Of the complaints center around the cargo area and how the third row fits into the cargo area, so let's talk about that. One of the big complaints is that the high cargo floor that places things over the bumper and into the cargo area is high on this vehicle because many of the hybrid system components for the powertrain are under the floor back here.

I understand the criticism. I understand them. They don't really apply to me. I have no problem lifting things in the back. I could see if you were older. fragile, not that strong, bringing things here could be a problem, but for me it's not really a problem. The other big complaint about the rear here is that there isn't enough room given how massive this vehicle is and I understand that, although it's worth noting. Some cool tricks it employs is that the third row seats can slide back and forth, so if I have my 2 year old back here, he doesn't need leg room, I can push the seat all the way forward. and get more cargo space and that's a nice trick that other automakers don't offer of course you can also fold the seats down if you're not using the third row and you have shelves back here which is a cool touch this floor can go up more. several different levels so you can have two rows of cargo shelves in the back, effectively doubling your cargo space if you have smaller items.

It's kind of a clever trick that increases the cargo capacity of the seoa behind the third row. It's also worth noting. That other feature I really like about the new Seoa is the fact that the tailgate glass still opens independently of the tailgate. You just saw the whole tailgate open. Here I can open the glass separately in case I want to put a smaller object in or reach out to grab something without going through the process of opening the entire tailgate, frankly from that perspective I think this is all pretty good done, at least for my purposes.

I can see the complaints, but this fits reasonably well into my lifestyle. That being said, the other big complaint about this vehicle is its price, it is expensive for what it offers, or so the reviews say. My answer to this is number one. It is not much more expensive than its rivals. Everything in this segment has surpassed. Control is expensive, but more importantly, this will hold its value better. If you look at the prices for 8 10 year old Chevy tahos, they are nowhere near what the precursors to Seoa Land Cruisers sell for, so you might pay a little more. head-on, but my opinion is that you usually make up for that and you really have to consider the total cost of ownership for the actual cost of the vehicle and not just the initial purchase price.

We'll see if that ends up being true when I go to sell it in a few years and the other thing I really like about my new Sequoia is the powertrain, Force Max V6, this is a turbocharged and hybrid V6 with about 440 horsepower and ​It's fantastic. I have driven it in the new tundra now it is here in the new seoa and I think it is a great engine, the V8 is gone but I had a car with the outgoing V8 and I much prefer this V6. I've heard of some early reliability issues on early Tundra models that had this engine, but it looks like it worked for the '23 and '24 model years and I look forward to driving this car with this engine because it really is great, so with that in mind Let's see how my new seoa handles.

I'll take it out on the road and give you my impressions, it's okay driving my Seoa TRD Pro with my camo seats and a car seat in the backrest, which is also very manly, so let's talk about Seoa TRD Pro My first impression when driving this vehicle is that it is tremendously large. I'm not a big car fan. I've never had a big car before. I had a Land Rover. A new Land Rover Defender briefly that is relatively large, but nothing like this. This is on a different level. A giant thing with a big body and full size and it's certainly big for driving around town.

And for me personally, I mean. That's why I won't be driving it around town much, we'll use it on road trips, we'll use it when the family visits the city, eh, but that's relatively rare, and then off-roading and other adventures like that. I suspect this is about 10,000m per year, which will be relatively low for a Seoa TRD Pro because most of these are

bought

for heavy use and use. I don't really like having large vehicles, so for me that is a drawback of this car, but there are many benefits, interior space is obviously one of them, as I mentioned before, the technology is actually surprisingly different.

Toyota's infotainment system, especially with carplay, is really good, it's not perfect, it could be better, but it's simple and easy and does exactly what I do. I want and you still have separate real buttons for the climate control and for most stereo functions, which is what I personally like. I also love this powertrain. I'm a big V8 guy. I love V8s. I have V8. I've always had V8, but now. Both of my daily cars have six-cylinder hybrid engines, my Mercedes truck and this, and it's great, they're both really good six-cylinder tricycle engines, basically the way I see it, it's a V6, but then the hybrid component. and the turbocharger component fills in the gaps where a V8 would have you dominate over a V6, so it actually has the acceleration, the mid-range power, the power, the performance of a V8, it feels like it sounds like it works .

I like it, it works like that, fuel economy isn't much better than a V8 to be completely honest, but from an acceleration etc point of view you're not really giving up that much, you're getting gas mileage slightly better and what I guess is there's a better emissions profile, you know, that's probably a component of why they did it, obviously the overall economy should benefit in some ways, it's a really nice energy trade-off. I really like Toyota's driver assistance technology, capacitive touch. The steering wheel is the only way to go, it's really crazy. It tells me that even Tesla still doesn't offer that, just a steering wheel that you can rest your hand on and it knows it and does what it's supposed to do and this one does it. it does well, one thing I'm not I'm delighted with the uh seoa is the ride quality um you go over the bumps and it just bounces you around it's really not ideal um it definitely doesn't feel like a luxury car it doesn't feel like a luxury car $882,000 or whatever it costs.

I'm really of the opinion that the Seoa has replaced the Land Cruiser in the Toyota world now that the Land Cruiser has fallen off the market and you can get a Sequoia for 80 grand, but one thing the Land Cruiser always did a little better was It felt more like a luxury vehicle and this is not this, this feels more like a truck now. I wouldn't have bought a vehicle that had a truck ride and a truck feel, but my requirement was that it be an off-road type. to force my hand, I also tried the Jeep Grand Cherokee and it was exactly the same, it jumped over the bumps, it was difficult and I think that's the reality of having off-road suspension travel, you know, off-road capabilities, it's just going to be a little bit more difficult to use.

On the road it's just going to be a little more stretchy and that's a trade off I had to make if I was going to try to combine the needs of multiple vehicles into one, it's great. I like it a lot. I think it's a great truck and I'm excited to have it. I really always wanted to have a TRD Pro. It came out 10 years ago and I always thought it was cool and I'm excited. that I'm finally in one, eh, even though it's also kind of a family car, a dad's car, it runs well and I plan to seriously exploit its off-road capabilities, so that's my 2024 Toyota seoa TRD.

Pro I never saw myself driving such a huge vehicle, so tan and so direct, but it really suits all my needs better than basically anything else and frankly, I really like it so far and now it's time to give my Fiesta Pro a score from Doug and Doug's score here is 58 out of 100, beating most of the other full-size SUVs I've reviewed except the Lincoln Navigator, which adds many more features and overall improved ride quality and materials. The Sea TRD Pro combines many great qualities, namely Toyota reliability, a fantastic powertrain, plenty of interior space and off-road capability.

Its big drawback is its cargo area packaging and its price, which has now taken over the Land Cruiser's mantle as Toyota's best SUV.