Our 2024 Truck of the Year–winning Chevrolet Colorado defends against the new Toyota Tacoma and Ford Ranger.
won our coveted Truck of the Year award for 2024was held up by strike-related shortages. Now, however, we’ve gotten our hands on both promising rivals. We know they’re greatly improved over their predecessors, but can they topple the Chevy?The breadth of the Colorado lineup was one of the factors that clinched its TOTY win, but for this comparison we chose to go straight down the middle with the $36,795 Colorado LT 4WD, the general practitioner of the bunch.
The Ford Ranger struck a nice middle ground. The tall center screen looked impressive, although some drivers thought it had too much real estate to cover with a quick glance. We appreciated the power-sliding rear window—the Chevy had a manual slider, the Toyota had none—but the twist-key ignition seemed out of place in a $45,000 vehicle.
Test data doesn’t always correlate to real-world driving impressions, so we set off on our test loop, departing the northern end of Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley for Simi Valley and the canyons that lie between them. Right away, the Chevrolet stepped out front as the best-riding truck in the group. We found it comfortable and almost carlike, although like the others it exhibited trucklike jiggles on the sectional concrete of State Route 118.
A short jaunt on a badly beat-up dirt road took us back to home base. We drove through the ruts in constant fear of breaking the Tacoma’s low-slung air dam, but a closer inspection found someone else had beat us to that punch. The Ford lost traction first, but a quick switch to 4 high got it moving.
Loading a sofa into the Ranger reminded us of the limitations of a 5-foot bed. Coincidentally, the Ranger had plastic around the tailgate handle that protected the paint from the overhanging leg of our couch. More important, the Ranger had its tie-down rings distributed front, middle, and rear, and that middle pair, located just aft of the fenders, proved very handy for lashing our bulky cargo into place.
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