One of the best-selling vehicles in the country, the Toyota Prado has long been the default choice for families wanting a comfortable, capable off-roader. With the new Prado just launched, we thought we’d rewind the clock a little and relook at the 2019 GXL for those in the market for a used Toyota Prado.
In 2019, a brand new Toyota Prado GXL would have set you back around $62,990 plus on roads (automatic). These days, they’re going for around (as per Carsales) $42,950 – $75,000
2019 Toyota Prado GXL specs
Although the latest model seems to be trying to change the narrative, the Toyota Prado had long been regarded as the boring but obvious choice for families after a reliable off-road tourer in 2019. In fact, if you looked at the sales in any given month, the Prado was almost always a thousand or more sales ahead of its nearest rival.
And when it comes to the best-selling Prado – the GXL – well, that’s the one we’re having this yarn about. Indeed, it accounts for more than two-thirds of all Prado sales, offering a touch of luxury but missing out on the KDSS and added creature comforts of the VX and Kakadu.
The 2019 Toyota Prado can tow how much now?
With Ford’s Everest beating the Prado for towing bragging rights, the Japanese carmaker literally re-wrote the specifications in 2018. We went to bed one night, and the Toyota Prado’s maximum braked towing capacity was 2500kg. We woke up the next day, and the GVM had been bumped up (2990kg), and the maximum braked towing capacity was, all of a sudden, 3000kg (for the automatic, anyway, manual variants were still limited to 2500kg). The Everest’s bragging rights had gone, but with no mechanical or engineering changes to the Prado, plenty of people were left wondering how it had happened.
With a kerb weight of 2385kg for the 2019 Prado GXL and a GVM of 2990kg, the payload is 665kg. The GCM is 5990kg and despite what some outlets have written in the past, saying the 2019 Toyota Prado GXL can have a full payload when towing at its maximum 3000kg, that’s complete bollocks, because they’re not accounting for towball download. That means if your trailer weighs 3000kg and your towball download is 300kg, well, your payload is just 365kg for you, your family, your luggage and all the accessories fitted to your vehicle. And you still need to add a tank of fuel.
Is the engine any good?
Toyota had ditched the V6 petrol for the 2019 Prado GXL some time ago, leaving just the 2.8-litre four-cylinder turbocharged diesel. This gave us 130kW at 3400rpm and 450Nm of torque at 1600-2400rpm (420Nm for manual-equipped models). This was the same engine as the HiLux, which is why both the Prado and HiLux made headlines for DPF issues. It turns out they allegedly have a tendency to clog prematurely.
Copping a class action prompted Toyota to install a manual burn switch in some vehicles, which leads us to ask the question that given the DPF is a consumable with a finite life, encouraging owners to perform a manual burn whenever they want, could that lead to wear out sooner? A topic for another time, perhaps. Maybe not.
Back to the engine itself. In addition to the GVM and towing capacity increase, it also copped an ECU tweak, but this was more about fuel efficiency than anything else.
Driven empty, the Prado GXL was brisk enough and the six-speed automatic (as tested) was okay, becoming a little clumsy in undulating terrain or at low speeds around town. Throw some weight into the thing and it becomes less urgent in its response. If I’m fair, the engine is okay when compared with the competition but it’s nowhere near as smooth, refined or urgent as the 2.0-litre bi-turbo diesel in the 2019 Ford Everest.
Will I get seasick driving it around?
Yep, there’s a fair chance you will. The soft, long-travel suspension that put the Toyota Prado GXL ahead of the pack off-road in 2019 dulled the on-road dynamics. Tip into a corner and there’s a lot of bodyroll and plenty of pitching and diving under hard acceleration and braking. Hit a bump in the road and the spongey setup on the Prado means it takes a moment to settle again. Think waterbed. In the same way its engine was outgunned by an Everest, so too is the on-road ride and handling.
And the steering wasn’t much better. Sure, it’s light which makes parking the big thing a breeze, but at speed it lacks weight or feel through the wheel. This means it’ll take you a while to get used to how much or how little lock you need to apply. At highway speeds, in the straight-ahead, there’s some slight nibbling at the wheel required to keep it straight, but that was probably more because our test vehicle had clearly been flogged.
It’s a similar story when it comes to the pedals in that you’ll need some run-in time to get used to the effort required to get a response. There’s a lot of pedal travel, there’s no feel, and response only occurs towards the end of the pedal’s travel. Meaning that when you’re braking, until you’re used to the action, you’ll find yourself needing more pressure to pull the thing up.
The rough and tumble is where this thing belongs, right?
Well, yes. The 2019 Toyota Prado was definitely one of the best seven-seat 4X4 wagons when the going got rough. In low-speed technical stuff, the suspension did a great job of staying in touch with the ground. Indeed, when we had the Prado on test, we also had an Everest, and in places where the Everest was picking up a wheel, the Prado had enough reach to keep its wheels on the ground.
But it’s not perfect. The traction control set-up on the Prado is excellent, in that it cuts in early to minimise any wheel spin and barely breaks its stride; and it’s this tune that helps the Prado step ahead of everything else in the segment despite its advancing age. And then there’s the lockable centre diff, which means drive is locked 50:50, allowing the thing to claw out even more traction.
Like, say, the 2019 Everest and, sort of, Mitsubishi Pajero Sport, the Toyota Prado is permanent all-wheel drive with high- and low-range. Only the automatic variants get access to the rear differential lock.
There’s product for that, right?
Yep, the Prado has been around for donkeys ages and that means there are accessories galore available to suit it. Oh, and while some of this thing’s competitors run AdBlue, the 2019 Toyota Prado doesn’t. There’s room under the Prado’s bonnet for a second battery and the boot floor is nice and flat, which makes it easy to fit racks and drawers.
That dashboard is a bit cluttered
While Toyota tried to tart up the Prado interior, it looked and felt tired in 2019 and, dare I say it, cheap with its hard, scratchy plastic and ancient-looking infotainment system. There are buttons galore scattered around the cabin and some don’t look like they were designed at the same time as the others and, on the move, it can be hard to work out which one does what. Cluttered and mis-matched is the best way to describe the dashboard but that’s not to say it’s not functional.
While I’ve got the baseball bat out, let’s talk about the infotainment system. It had the ‘2019 basics’, like sat-nav, Bluetooth and it’ll stream music from your phone nine times out of 10 without an issue. But the graphics were incredibly clumsy looking and the lack of Apple CarPlay and Android Auto marked the system as just about average with plenty of room for improvement.
Much room to move?
The 2019 Toyota Prado offers room for seven across three rows, with the two seats in the third-row a 50:50 split-fold arrangement that can be a real pain to raise and then lower. You should only go for the seven-seats if you absolutely need seven seats, as fitting the third-row raises the boot floor. You don’t lose a lot of functional space, but loading and unloading, obviously, becomes trickier for those who are vertically challenged. Indeed, setting up the seats isn’t as easy as it is in, say, a Ford Everest. You’ve got to pull the back of the seat up, with quite a bit of force too, and then slide the base out.
Leave them for pre-teens, and you’ll be fine.
The second-row seats in the 2019 Toyota Prado offer enough room for three adults to sit comfortably with good head, leg and foot room. Where the Prado scores points with me, is that the second-row seats are a 40:20:40 split, which is how all second-row seats should be setup – they also slide fore and aft, and the seatbacks can be reclined slightly. And when the two rows are folded down you get a nice flat floor with sturdy tie-downs.
Into the front, and the driving position is nice and high, and the seat is comfortable if not overly supportive when bumping around off-road or when the thing is rolling through a corner on the bitumen. There’s good movement on the seat for drivers of all heights to get comfortable behind the wheel and the steering wheel offers reach and rake adjustment.
General storage in the cabin is pretty good with door bins, deep centre console storage, cup holders and more.
The boot is interesting in that with all three rows in use there’s bugger all room in the boot. You’ll get a couple of shopping bags in there and that would be about it – 120L which sounds bigger than the space looks. Drop the third row down and there’s still only 480 litres of boot space which isn’t very big at all by segment standards.
Safety ain’t amazing
Sure, the 2019 Toyota Prado had a five-star ANCAP rating but it was a carry-over from the 2010 test. The entire Prado range offers, as standard, autonomous emergency braking, lane-departure warning but not assistance, and automatic high beam. If you plump for the VX you get blind-spot monitoring and rear cross-traffic alert.
The Prado, of course, runs permanent four-wheel drive, traction and stability controls, seven airbags with curtain airbags that’ll reach into the third-row, keyless entry and start, and an engine immobiliser, as well as ISOFIX mounts on the two outboard seats in the second row.
So, should you buy one?
This might be a bit of a letdown, but if you want a large, reliable (cough, DPF issues aside) 4X4 that you can drive into the outback and back again, then the Prado is still hard to go past. Sure, it feels old and cheap inside, it’s not all that nice to drive on the road, and the boot isn’t very big nor is the engine the gruntiest in the segment, but, there’s still enough to recommend the Prado.
Words by Isaac Bober, Images by Brett Hemmings.
