Automotive Trends

     This is a Tacoma?
     Can’t be. A Tacoma is a dinky little Toyota truck with dinky little doors and a dinky little bench seat. There’s no way this truck — a big, tall, four-wheel-drive, four-door, honest-to-goodness truck — could possibly be a Tacoma.
     It’s just not dinky enough.
     Thus were my thoughts when Toyota delivered a 2005 Tacoma for a test drive. Expecting to see something smaller, perhaps like a tall Camry with a pickup bed glued to the back, it was instead the compact-truck equivalent of Bigfoot — large, rugged and manly.
     Sure enough, it had a Tacoma badge on the side. It wasn’t a fluke.
     That’s because Toyota totally redesigned its smallest truck for 2005 to make it bigger, more powerful and more refined, adding about six inches in length and four inches in width. That may not seem like a lot, but it’s enough to make it look and feel a whole lot beefier than the old model.
     Even with its larger dimensions and increased passenger room, the new Tacoma offers a stronger, stiffer chassis and improved maneuverability. New suspension and steering tuning improve performance and handling both on and off the road.
     Two engines are available, forcing buyers to make a choice between economy and brute strength. A 2.7-liter, four-cylinder engine makes 164 horsepower, while a 4.0-liter V6 makes a whopping 245 horsepower and 282 foot-pounds of torque.
     Two new transmissions are offered with the V6 engine, a six-speed manual and a five-speed automatic. The four-cylinder models offer a choice between a five-speed manual and a four-speed automatic transmission.
     Tacoma features a new integrated hitch and bumper design, too. With the right equipment, a V6-powered Tacoma can tow up to 6,500 pounds, up from 5,000 pounds last year.
     Instead of taking an aggressive styling stance like the Nissan Titan or Chevy Colorado, for example, Toyota kept the Tacoma’s body relatively conservative. It looks slightly better than the old model, but it still shows a little influence from the outgoing Camry with smooth, rounded fenders and a small grille that looks far too graceful to be on a truck.
     (NOTE TO TOYOTA: Next time you design a pickup, make it look tough enough that writers won’t have to resort to words like “graceful” to describe it. Give it a family resemblance to Paul Bunyan, not the Camry. Got it?)

     Aside from that subjective styling quibble, there’s not much to dislike about it. The ride and drive are excellent, with a surprisingly quiet cabin and a suspension that soaks up the potholes better than you’d expect in a four-wheel-drive pickup.
     Predictably, Toyota offers lots of configurations for the Tacoma, ranging from a two-wheel-drive Regular Cab model ($13,415 with a manual transmission) to a decked-out 4×4 Double Cab with four big doors ($25,250 with a long bed, V6 and automatic tranny).
     Overall, the new Tacoma is a fantastic truck. Not only does it have Toyota’s reputation for quality and reliability over the long haul, it’s got the size and power to compete with any compact trucks on the road today.
     If it only looked as great as it drove, Toyota could finally give the American brands a real battle.