I Want To Love the Manual Toyota Tacoma. But I Don’t

The bravery in offering a new, mass-market product like the Toyota Tacoma with a manual transmission cannot be understated. In a world where manuals have been slowly going extinct (save for some niche sports cars), a normie, home-grown, salt-of-the-earth pickup with a stick is an aberration. So I had to try it myself for our newest Youtube video. The self-shifted Tacoma can be best described as a mixed bag.

However triumphant a manual Tacoma sounds, the actual bones of the “new” manual are similar to the previous generation. It uses a derivative of a Hilux diesel gearbox, itself a variation of the old Tacoma ‘box but with much shorter ratios. Much of the ergonomics of the clutch pedal and shifter feel carried over as well, and that’s before the relative losses to the automatic start.

The shorter ratios apparently match better to the low-revving, laggy nature of the new 2.4-liter turbocharged engine, which only revs to about 5,400 rpm with the manual–slightly lower than with the auto thanks to the flywheel. The manual also only gets 270 horsepower and 310 pound-feet, while the auto gets 278 hp and 317 lb-ft–another demerit.

Thus, the Tacoma’s manual seems like a bit of a hack job. It makes less power and uses parts-bin stuff from across the world to make something that Toyota truck enthusiasts have clamored for. And in practice, the Tacoma manual is far from perfect. In fact, it’s highly imperfect and objectively poorly tuned. 

So what makes it good and bad? Well, you’ll just have to watch to find out.