2019 Toyota Tacoma TRD Pro with a Snorkel: Such fun!

When Josh from DriveShop delivered this year’s Toyota Tacoma TRD Pro (one big butch truck) with a snorkel attached and told me “please don’t take it in the water,” I really thought he’d either had too much or not enough caffeine that morning.

But as my nephew DJ explained (I always rely on the kids to explain this stuff to me), you really can take this car into the water and truly have fun with it! Yeah, well, that’s not totally what it’s all about – but it kinda is.   Traditional air intake for engines happens right where the engine is, but with a snorkel mounted about the roofline, the air intake happens high above the engine, so in theory, you can weed out all the crap, like sand and dust and dirt and water, that might otherwise interfere with your performance. 

It’s a performance enhancer for sure (sometimes we all need that, gents) and it is an available option, so you have to ask for it. But know this: the 2019 Tacoma is more off-road ready than ever before, so let’s say you and the boys decide to go  Climb Every Mountain like Julie Andrews in  The Sound of Music, all because you had a few too many lattes or scones.  That can be done almost spontaneously in the 2019 Tacoma (be sure you have enough petrol).

Hard to believe that in some circles, this behemoth is considered a ‘compact’ pickup truck, which is sorta like your uber chubby friends being called Tiny. To be sure, there are bigger boys at the feeding trough, but rest assured, this year’s Tacoma, especially as a TRD Pro trim (with its own snorkel) stands nice and tall and proud in the offensive line. 

Standard equipment at the TRD level, which is about three steps up from the base SR and SR5 trims, will give you a 3.5-liter V6 engine that offers 278 horses with 265 pound-feet of torque, big butch alloy wheels, fender flares and other accoutrements and accents that make the Tacoma TRD a very impressive looking truck.   As a bear-about-town-and-country, you should expect nothing less. There is also a specific off-road trim that has extra skid plates and a locking rear differential for those extra rough vacations. 

(An irony about the Tacoma is that you have to stand tall to step into the truck, but once you are in, well…. you have to maneuver around to get comfortable if you really are the Jolly Gay Giant.)

I always get a ton of promotional materials with these loans, and one I received for this loan was entitled “Designed for Safety,” which goes on to say “Toyota Safety Sense™ (TSS) is a bundle of active safety features designed to help protect you and your passengers from harm [and it is] standard on 16 models at no additional cost.”

Cutting to the chase, this is a great package of standard safety features: pre-collision with pedestrian detection, dynamic radar cruise control, lane departure warning with sway alert (yes, it does sound the alarm even when you cha-cha-cha a little too much in the driver’s seat), automatic high beams, rear backup camera, rear parking sonar, blind spot monitoring, rear cross-traffic alert…. Heck, Toyota even allows you to adjust some of these features.  Some.

If you want a truck – and more importantly, have the room and the need and the cashflow to afford a truck – you should definitely check out the 2019 Tacoma.  There are not many left on dealer show floors at this point in the year so there are deals to be had.   Just make sure there is room for another mouth to feed in your fledgling nest of a home. 

Nothing like surprising the love of your life with something that the stork brought, only to find out that the bank and the landlord may not be as thrilled about it as you are.