Hi everybody, it's Peter and I'm here at Jim Gilbert's Wheels and Deals. Reviewing in detail the 2023 Toyota Tacoma. This is a T R D Sport with premium package. And yes, I just looked aside to make sure I get the name right, long name for a fairly long truck. This is an extended cab long box, which is something that you can't always get in the mid-size truck segment. We also want to talk really briefly about if I don't answer any question that you have about this vehicle in my review, make sure you let me know in the comments below. Because filming here at Jim Gilbert's Wheels deals, I have complete access to their entire vehicle line and I can come back to this vehicle again and again to make sure that you get the answers you need. So I'm gonna try to show you some of the things that the other reviewers aren't showing you, but if there's something I missed and you want to know, let me know. 
The other great thing about here at Jim Gilbert's Wheels and Deals is you can compare this truck side by side with all of its competitors. They're all sitting right here on the lot, so you have lots of options to check this out. All right, 2023 Toyota Tacoma. What are we looking at here? Well, first of all, this is a truck. This truck has been around for a long time and for a lot of people they kind of think it hasn't really evolved much. But the reason this continues to be the top resale value truck and one of the top resale value vehicles out there is cuz they continue to evolve it to add the features, to keep it up to date while still keeping some of the features that have been proven reliable. That's really what this truck is. It's all about reliability with updated features.

So outside, not a whole lot to look at here compared to what's new. You've got projector beam headlights, you've got fog lights down here. We can show you them later if you need to. Moving back through extended cab here, we're gonna show you the box really quickly first and then we're gonna work our way inside to try to show you some of the updates that are going on in these newer vehicles. Cuz if you haven't seen a Tacoma for a while, there's some nice things in this one that you maybe haven't seen in a previous one. So let's start with the box and work our way into the vehicle. Alright, a couple things I wanna point out here. This one has blind spot detection, which means somewhere in this area, probably in the lights there is a sort of radar piece that can help see vehicles in your blind spot.

That also gives you rear cross traffic alert, but the blind spot warning, uh, basically uses a radar plate here. So these are the little things you don't see in the updated vehicle. V6 of course that's been uh, standard for this vehicle for a while. You've got the tow hitch down here, toes, plenty of weight for the class. You probably, if you're getting near the max tow weight of this anyways, you probably want to move on to uh, a full size truck at that point. But, you know, 5,000 pounds, it's completely reasonable. It tows more than that. Down here you've got your seven pin and four pin wiring. What I like about that is it's above the bumper. One that's easier to get to, easier to stay clean, although I have snow here today. It just is something that doesn't get as dirty underneath there. It's easier to reach, easier to see. 
So that works really well as well. Camera up here, cameras are standard on every vehicle. Now they're required by law, so not really a new thing but um, you know, your older Tacoma may not have it. What I really like is they now have the soft open tailgate here. And then of course you got the typical Tacoma stuff in here. This is not a bed liner, this is a, uh, a bed that is a composite type, uh, bed in here. There's a couple features I wanna show you. So I'm gonna bring the camera around the other side to show you inside. So taking a look here at the passenger side of the truck, a lot of things I wanna show you here. First of all, we've got a active bay on the other side, so I apologize if it's hard to hear me, but you have these adjustable, uh, rails here, which are super smart.
You just loosen 'em off, put 'em wherever you want and you tighten 'em up. If you over tighten 'em, they're just gonna click sort of like a ratchet type thing so you can't overtighten them. They're always easy to get undone because of that. So you know, if you've got somebody with a really strong grip that tightens these kind of things in some app, in some applications, uh, then maybe somebody with less strong grip can't undo them. That's not the issue here they are, uh, easy to undo because they will ratchet and click when they get too tight. So that holds everything in place and you have the ability to move. There's two on either side, put them wherever you want. In addition to that, there are fixed points down here. Uh, there's a little uh, d-ring down at the very bottom here. I dunno if you can see that there's a D-ring or a different style D-ring on the side, bottom of the front of the truck as well.

So you've got permanent fixed tie down points along with these movable ones here. And then you have this right here. This is my favorite feature, you say, okay, it's a plug. I don't know if you can see it clear the air. It's a regular style, uh, household outlet. Now a lot of SUVs have something like that. A lot of SUVs don't have power more than like a hundred watts to that. This one has up to 400 watts, which means if you're going camping or doing something like that, you can start to power some real devices here rather than just um, you know, your typical, you know, maybe charge a cellphone, maybe charge a drill battery while you're driving kind of thing. You've got real power here, which is nice. Now it's not quite the Ford system of their basically generator built into the truck, but uh, for a system that runs on an inverter like a battery, a pretty good system, uh, in here.

So again, bedliner all the functions you want in a truck. And again, we should talk about the length of the bed. About a six foot bed here. A lot of full size trucks don't have beds that are this long anymore. So although this truck is narrower, you're able to fit it into certain garages that are into parking spots. You still have the full length, which means you can put a lot of things in here, uh, including things that you wouldn't be able to fit as easily in a full size in some full size trucks. All right, so now I'm gonna show you one of the most controversial pieces of any mid-size truck. The reason that a lot of people say they want a full size truck is because they don't fit into a mid-size truck. So first of all, the seat is adjusted for me. 
I'm a six footer, that's what that is. The door opens very wide, almost about 90 degrees, which is really good. Gives you a lot of space. If you're getting child seats in and outta here, you can do that with that wide opening door and being six feet tall. Let's see how I fit. Now the Tacoma has a high floor compared to some other trucks. Is my head near the ceiling? Yes, is a bump out right here. So I have, you know, a couple fingers of space between myself and that. Am I comfortable? I actually pretty much am my seat. My legs are a little off the seat. You probably wouldn't wanna put full size adults here for like a trip across the country, but a couple hours here, not a big deal. You've got room to move. I've got space underneath the, uh, seat here for my toes and I have knee room here. You know, the width of my fingers, uh, is about what I have. So a six footer in front, a six footer behind. Both can be comfortable. Now if you're a little bit shorter than me, you're gonna create some more room back here, but probably you're not taking a whole lot of six footers. You know, is it controversial? Is it not? It's kind of class competitive. There's not a ton of space like those massive full size trucks. Uh, but again, that makes this a little bit easier to park sometimes. So do I fit? Yeah, I do. Am I comfortable? Yeah, I am. Is it the best available rear seat in a pickup? No, it's not. But it's, you know, very usable and these crew cabs are very popular for that reason.

Now we're gonna head inside the Tacoma. Before we do, let's show you the key fob. This is what I like about the Tacoma. They don't try to dress it up with like a fancy key fob. Make it real stylish. I have a Jeep Wrangler. It's a massive key fob that's set up more for style. This fits in your pocket, it's nothing fancy, it just works. Lock unlock. There's your panic button. That's all you got. That's all you need. So I'm gonna put that in my pocket again. It is uh, keyless entry here. So just come up, touch the door handle, it'll all unlock. And let's check out the driver's seat here. Now this is a leather style seat. It may Look cloth-like just cuz of the pattern there, but it is Leather seat and uh, you've Got your typical uh, power adjustments and You've got your lumbar. Now one thing I'm gonna point out, compared to some of the other trucks in this class, the Tacoma is very much, um, your legs are stretched out where a lot of other trucks, your legs are stretched down. That gives you good ground clearance here, um, without making the truck too tall to get in and out of. But it is a different seating position than in some of the other trucks. So, uh, some people like it, some people don't. I think a lot of people do cuz it's given the popularity of this truck. Uh, but it is different than a lot of trucks in his class. So we're gonna go wide angle here, skew the edges a little bit just to make sure we get everything in the shot. Let's shut the door here. We'll get outta the noise of our noisy video bay and I wanna just turn the vehicle to the on position but not start it cuz we are indoors right now. And when I'll show you a number of the features of this vehicle that are just kind of the things that I think make the Toyota keep up, the things that kind of make it make sense. So of course it's gonna warm me by the charging system here. Let's just zoom in. Let's just zoom in one more time. Check charging system. Well that's because we haven't got the vehicle running. So this screen here, if I can just, uh, adapt it a little bit. There we go. There's your dash. This screen here is gonna continue to warm me. Basically the car's not running and that's a problem for it.

It's not charging that battery and that's okay. Uh, left side tack. Cool gauge or uh, temperature gauge there. Uh, fuel gauge and speedometer there. Now you do have in here this, uh, system here. Let's just go across here. So this one with this premium edition package, you've got a lot. So first of all, let's just check through the basics here. Current fuel economy, trip, distance, time, all that kind of tough stuff, time to rest. So this is a newer feature in a lot of new vehicles. It's like, hey, you're uh, maybe driving, uh, a long time or you're driving a little erratic or that kind of thing. So this is part of, um, Toyota's safety features that they throw in there. Let's just continue to get rid of that message there. And what I like is you can have a blank screen and you can go down a lot of vehicles.

Once you go down in the menu, uh, following that bar down, you have to sort of cycle back to the top and you have to come back out. This one can cycle right through. So that's a good thing. Let's just see if we can get rid of that. Uh, let's go over to here. Navigation is in this vehicle. So when you use your navigation, your map system, if you want, you can leave this screen over there as is or on whatever you want. And then you can put your navigation, uh, settings up here, which is nice to have. Uh, there's music, sir. Satellite radio, amm fm. We'll talk about other options in a second. Tire pressures, vehicle's not running right now and it's hey, uh, the condition's not on on. So the charging system's got a warning there. And then you've got uh, pre-collision, uh, stuff.

Yeah, this is the easiest to use cruise control out of almost any vehicle. It's just, uh, resumes set and turn it on and off like that. It's super, super simple. They've been using it since at least the nineties, uh, maybe even before that. But yeah, definitely the nineties. It just works. So they have, uh, simple controls. Again, doesn't evolve but works and that's really what the tacoma's about. Don't change it if it's working. You've got your ability to go through the menu that I was just showing you. You've got your uh, audio controls over on this side, Bluetooth for your foam down here. You've got automatic high beams you can turn on or off there and let's just zoom in again and again. Again, sorry about the little bit of graininess on the picture here. It's a little, it is a little darker in that area. 

Whoa, there we go. Uh, so there's your rear door. I'm having trouble with my camera mount. There we go. Sorry about that. This is what I was trying to show you here. So there's your automatic high beams, you can turn them on or off. Uh, so you can just turn your high beams on. They'll be auto dimming for uh, when there's traffic. So we can see that there. And then you've got your 400 watts inverter, which is uh, allows that plug in the back to be up to 400 watts. You can turn that on or off. So not uh, everybody can just plug in, sort of drain your battery kind of thing. Uh, power windows, that kind of thing. Let's go back out a little bit more. Let's come over to this screen area and talk about sort of the heart of what, what is now the heart of the interior of most vehicles here. 
So screen here is very good. If I throw it in reverse, can I do that? No, I can't do, oh, I can't do it without driving. There we go. So you've got, uh, this typical Toyota screen. You've got the typical backup camera. It works just fine. Uh, very clear screen, which is nice to have. Gonna put it back in park so we can go back to all sorts of things. So you can go to your home menu, which is where we are. Other menus in here. You've got audio or uh, audio features there. So you can go over to just your radio. Um, again, we have AM and FM here. Of course we have satellite as well. We also have, if we go back to the menu, a projection option that is Android Auto and Apple CarPlay. So both of those things can be um, uh, set up Android Auto and Apple CarPlay in here. 
So you have some extra navigation features, communication features, all that kind of stuff. Hasn't always been available in the Tacoma, but of course it is now in the 2023 model has been for a little while. Climate control. I've got it turned off right now. Automatic climate control, it is a dual zone system, which is quite nice to have as well. Left side, right side. Uh, you can see I've got 'em both set to 23. That fan kicks in nicely. Got my uh, seat heater on here. So three levels of seat heating. And they are, even though the button doesn't sort of press in and stay in like a lot of Toyotas, uh, it is sort of always on if you leave it on. So in other words, if you turn the car off, it doesn't reset a lot of other vehicles competitors. Uh, turn the car off and you'll have to turn that seat heater on again. 
This one's gonna stay on when you turn the car off, which is kind of nice. So we're gonna turn the climate system off here for a second. And, uh, a couple little interesting things because it's a pickup truck with a sliding rear window. It doesn't always have the rear window defrost. So this would normally be your rear window defroster. This one doesn't have it on this particular option package. Um, but you can still defrost your mirrors like that older one, older Tacomas, way older. Tacomas used to have a, uh, manual switch. This is tool drive four high and four low. So you still have off-road capability here. You get the blind spot monitoring E C T, electronic controlled transmission. Ooh, I'm saying this wrong, it's something EC T stands for something in the transmission. Basically this is kind of like your tow hall mode, but what I like about it is it's properly labeled when you research this from Toyota. . What this button does is it allows the, uh, transmission to uh, e ec T power to basically gain power. In other words, it changes the shift points. So when you're towing, this is not something you have to use all the time, but if you're accelerating onto the highway or if you're going up a long hill, you can tap that switch for quote more power now. It's not really more power, it just changes your shift points. What Toyota points out though is you don't have to run in this all the time. If you do, you're just gonna have reduced fuel efficiency because it does, you know, change the efficiency of the shift points. So even when towing, you don't need to throw this in a towing mode in order to, you know, tow it can handle the towing, it can uh, still try to get as good efficiency as possible. 
But when you need the power, for instance going up a hill, passing power, those kind of things, you can tap that button and tap it on and off. A lot of uh, other modes are just saying towing mode and people get in the habit of, you know, pressing that button when they're towing. They get worse fuel efficiency than they need to. So a Toyota names it weirdly, but in some ways correctly by not calling it a towing mode, it does do that electric rear window. You don't get that in uh, at least. I used to have a 2018 Colorado with a opening rear window. This is a sliding rear window. We'll show you that in a second. But this is electrically opening, which is much nicer. That means you're gonna use it USB port here. Wireless charging is a button right there. So you have a wireless charge pad down here and you have a button to turn it on or off right there. 

Nice and simple right there. So you can use this for whatever you need, but if you want it to be charging your things, you can turn it on. Sometimes that could be a detriment if you throw your phone there and forget to turn it on. But I think most people will see because it's right in line visually it works well. Uh, 12 volt port there as well. Moving back here, cup holders, typical stuff transmission with the manual shift option. Another cup holder back here. So you've got the little extra cup holders three instead of two out front here, which is kind of nice as well. Gonna go wide angle for a second. We're gonna spin around the vehicle just to sort of show you a couple little other things. You've got the handles there to get in. It can be a taller vehicle for some people so you've got an option to get in on the passenger side. 
There is not that on the driver's side. Uh, that handles just simply because you've got the steering wheel and other things that it would be in the way of, but that works. Little things that Toyota's done forever that I think sometimes we forget. Here's your garage door openers built into the mirror. It's nice things to have. Uh, you've got the new telematics system so you can call for help, you can do various things usually with an app as well, although I haven't researched specifically on this vehicle. So we'll have to do a little more research to talk in depth about that telematic system. Still have sunglasses holder up here, nice and soft open like it's always been. There's your sunroof controls and let's just see if we can show you the sunroof right there. Just a normal size sunroof as we scroll around here. Oops, get that camera back down. 
You can see there's your rear seats there. And you do have that opening rear window, which is two things. It is fairly large and it is a very small Bard window. So small, uh, uh, the bar right there and right there. Uh, just, it just gives you great visibility. Again, just little typical Toyota stuff. Why change it if it's been working? So nice things here. The other thing I like is the events. They are good size and easily adjustable. Even if you're like wearing work gloves or something else, uh, you can pop these open, you can spin them around, you can put them where you want and uh, they're just easy to work no matter what and they feel durable. Sometimes the events can feel chinsy and that's kind of the thing with this whole interior. It feels very good, feels very durable. Let's flip the camera around for a second. 
I'll show you what it looks like for a six footer sitting in here. So again, uh, six footer sitting in here and I've got good headroom with the sunroof. Uh, good headroom even beside the sunroof here it is a little bit more s u v like feeling in this than a full size truck. It the narrowness of this truck you kind of feel. So it's still roomy enough for larger people, but it is a little more sporty feeling in some ways. It's just kind of, everything's kind of right here within reach where you need it, which I kind of like. If you need massive amounts of space, obviously you're not searching in this class, but everything's within reach and this is good. This turning circle on this is still fairly long with the double cab or the extended like the crew cab essentially. And the long box. 
You still have a vehicle that is as long as many full size pickup trucks. Uh, but like I mentioned, you still have that really extended length bed that's longer than some full size pickup trucks. But the narrowness here does make it a little bit easier to park and uh, it certainly makes it a little easier to go down the highway. You kind of feel like it's just more compact and that's what it is. It's a mid-size truck, which are, you know, in some ways the compact trucks of the day other than things like Ford Maverick Hyundai, Santa Cruz. So very good. Uh, overall space, very good comfort here. Again, seating position here. Lemme just see if I can woo going the wrong way. Show you my legs here. Again, legs are out, but they're not like straight out. They're just on a typical truck. They'd be a little bit more like this. You're a little bit more like that. So all that means is you're gonna adjust the seat a little differently than you would

In other competitive trucks to get comfortable. But it is very comfortable in here. So who is this truck for? Well, obviously there's a couple key components. This has some off-road capability. It's got good ground clearance. It's known to be durable. So if you're driving in places where the roads aren't fantastic or there's dirt roads or gravel roads or you're camping or working on a farm or working in off-road areas, all of these Toyotas are gonna be good for that. And uh, this one as well. The other thing, this is, this is a great truck for the value shopper consistently year after year after year. The Tacoma is one of the best resale pickup trucks. It is the best resale pickup truck. And frankly, it's almost always one of the best resale vehicles, uh, that you can buy certainly in the top five every single time. 

So even though sometimes the Toyota costs a little bit more than so of its competitors and hey, I know I bought a Colorado in the past, it holds its value and the overall ownership cost is going to be less. They're also known to be very reliable. Sometimes you don't get the latest and greatest, for instance, the transmission's a six speed instead of something like a a nine or a 10 speed in other trucks. Uh, but some of that, um, gives you that reliability. It's been around for a while, it's been proven and Toyota doesn't, doesn't change something that's working well. So this is the 2023, those interior upgrades, I think they matter if you're looking for a truck that has some of the safety features, some of those little bit of enhanced, uh, things inside, you still get that in the Tacoma even though you're getting some of the tried and true proven pieces. So if you wanna compare this vehicle to other vehicles, make sure you swing by Jim Gilbert's Wheels and Deals. There are all kinds of competitors sitting right next to this. You can compare that. And if you wanna know more about this vehicle, let me know when the comments below because I can come back to this vehicle in detail, uh, to help you out. So thanks every for watching.