Prado comfortable and honest
What the Prado doesn’t do well, it doesn’t bother doing at all, but that’s fine with us, writes Damien O’Carroll.
There is a word that describes the ride and handling of the Toyota Prado perfectly. It is a word made up by English author Douglas Adams to describe how alien sentient mattress creatures moved around on their swamp-like planet. That word is flollop.
‘‘The mattress flolloped around.’’ he wrote in Life, the Universe and Everything, the third book in the alarmingly and inaccurately named trilogy of five original books. ‘‘This is a thing that only live mattresses in swamps are able to do, which is why the word is not in more common usage.’’
Except it turns out this isn’t quite right, as the Toyota Prado flollops around corners with all the grace of a damp mattress. Not that this is a bad thing, no matter how bad it actually sounds.
No, I am not actually criticising the Prado here – I am simply trying to paint a picture in your mind of exactly how the Prado moves in the real world.
It lumbers, wallows and, well, flollops its way through life, never once being anything less than superbly comfortable and not even remotely sporty.
Which is a thoroughly excellent thing in a large SUV.
The most important traits of a large ladder-chassis SUV are: comfort, towing ability, comfort, space, off-road ability and comfort, in that order.
So the Prado’s utter lack of any of those silly sporting pretensions that some other (mainly German) large SUVs have is a welcome omission.
The Prado’s handling is, as you would expect, equally flollopy and extremely predictable. Hammer into a corner too hard and it all quickly descends into wallowy understeer and much spirited flashing by the stability control light.
But ease it in sensibly and it will graciously float around, albeit leaning rather heavily on the outside front tyre.
With the refreshed version Toyota New Zealand has dropped the petrol V6 engine from the local range, so the Prado now only comes with Toyota’s 130kW/ 450Nm 2.8-litre inline four-cylinder diesel turbo, including the entrylevel GX model we test here.
Nailing the throttle for the first time, you could also be under the impression that they have actually dropped all engines from the Prado. Or, at least, forgotten to put one in the example you are driving.
Acceleration off the line is relaxed, to say the least, with the big Prado gathering its thoughts before grudgingly gathering forward momentum in a somewhat reluctant fashion.
Once it has gathered a bit of momentum – and the diesel engine is sitting in the meaty part of its torque curve – things do improve, and the Prado becomes considerably more eager and responsive to throttle inputs, but you would never accuse it of being ‘‘fast’’ in any traditional sense. Even saying ‘‘not slow’’ would be stretching it really.
Still, that is not what the Prado is all about.
The Prado is all about those things I mentioned before – comfort, towing ability, comfort, space, off-road ability and comfort – and after a week with the GX, I can happily say it does at least five of those six things very well indeed. I say five out of six, because I didn’t tow anything.
But, particularly, it nails those three comforts with imperious ease.
From the cosseting, delightfully flollopy ride, to the excellent driving position and the brilliantly comfortable seats, the Prado does comfort better than anything its age has a right to.
Yeah, that’s right – the Prado is old now.
Despite the fact that the refresh has bought about a new face, the current Prado still dates back to 2009, which is essentially prehistoric in a car sense.
So, it’s old, it’s slow and it handles like a sentient swamp mattress, so it’s rubbish, right? Well, not really, no.
You see, while the Prado may have its downsides, it remains a brilliantly comfortable, spacious and refreshingly honest SUV that doesn’t pretend to be anything other than a big comfortable SUV.
Once it is up and running, the Prado glides effortlessly along and remains impressively capable (and, yes, comfortable) off the road as well.
The entry-level GX we test here costs a not-inconsiderable $70,890 and while it lacks the VX and VX Limited’s more ostentatiously Lexus-style interior affectations, it is still well-equipped and luxurious enough to justify that money.
The addition of the new driver assists and safety features keep the Prado up with the younger kids in terms of not killing you, while the new dash keeps it looking young as well.
But it is the new, more brutally truck-like face is the biggest improvement to the Prado, with the big chrome grille and chunky, sculpted bonnet bringing it more in line with its even-bigger brother, the Land Cruiser 200-series, rather than the dorky bug-eyed look of the previous Prado.
It’s old, wallowy and slow, but I’ll be damned if I didn’t like the big fella despite all of that.
What it does well, it does exceptionally well.
What it doesn’t do well it simply doesn’t bother doing. And you’ve got to respect that.