2024 Toyota Grand Highlander First Drive: Hybrid Energy Paired With 3-Row Area

The Grand Highlander’s toned-down exterior avoids a lot of the extreme angles and plastic cladding bolted onto so many huge SUVs as an try to beef up rugged cred. As an alternative, the smoother design hints at the truth that this new SUV is undeniably a folks pleaser, in and out. The entire level, as Toyota’s advertising supplies will counsel, is to carry collectively multi-generational households with kids, buddies, pets, and equipment—so I instantly wanted to climb into the third row of seats to check whether or not they sufficiently differentiate Grand Highlander from its greater and smaller siblings.

To get there, I scrambled over the second row, with its detachable middle console and nifty step plate on both sides of the captain’s chairs. Sadly, truly folding the second row seats ahead requires one thing of an engineering diploma—even the Toyota handlers on website struggled to take action. However as soon as within the third row, I match surprisingly properly at 6’1″ with lengthy legs and a brief torso. These 33.5 inches of third row legroom appear fairly legit, to say the least, and the headroom by no means compelled me to hunch over, both.

Michael Teo Van Runkle/SlashGear

Toyota additionally claims that the Grand Highlander can match seven full-sized suitcases behind the third row, even when doing so will doubtless require a little bit of Tetris-style technique. When it comes to measurements on paper, the rear cargo compartment can match 21 cubic toes with all of the seats up, 60 cubic toes with the third row folded down flat, and 98 cubic toes with each the second and third rows folded. Suffice to say, the bodily quantity of the inside feels nearer to Sequoia than Highlander.