Sand Fight: 2025 Chevrolet Colorado ZR2 Bison vs. Ford Ranger Raptor vs. Toyota Tacoma TRD Pro in the Desert

To most folks, “Baja mode” is flip-flops and a drink with an umbrella in it at a tourist resort in Cabo San Lucas. To be honest, we’d like that version too, but haven’t convinced management to send us back to Mexico since Csaba Csere hit a cow with a Dodge in the ’80s. So instead of a swim-up bar, we headed to the desert—and the test track—with three of the most off-road-capable mid-size pickups on the market today.

This partially revisits a matchup from 2024—Toyota Tacoma TRD Off-Road and Chevrolet Colorado ZR2—but this time we took those already-capable off-roaders up a level, with the TRD Pro and the ZR2 Bison. Ford’s Ranger Raptor rounded out the trio. Our desert rumble saw us roostertailing through sand washes, hanging the bed ends out around cholla cactus, and sliding the Styrofoam cooler around in the back seat. If you don’t have to give the carbonated beverages a minute to settle at the end of a trail, you haven’t been trying.

We’ll spoil the ending a tiny bit by saying all three are fantastic trucks, with different areas in which they shine or stumble, but we’ve got a method to picking a winner that rewards vehicles for features and efficiency as much as for performance and flair, and we threw these trucks together in the dirt to see which one came out on top.

The Trucks We Tested

The Tacoma owns the off-road mid-size truck scene, at least out near California’s Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, where we took our trio for this comparison. There were so many Tacos in the parking lots and gas stations that we had to double-check that we were walking up to the correct one. Our Tacoma did stand out, thanks to multiple TRD Pro graphics and its 2024-only, TRD Pro–specific Terra orange paint. For 2025, buyers get a new canvas-tan shade seductively called Mudbath. Aside from the new color option, as well as red front tow hooks, 2025 TRD Pros are the same, which makes sense, given that the 2024 model year introduced a massive redesign for the Tacoma.

The TRD Pro comes only in a crew-cab, five-foot-bed configuration, as do the Chevy and the Ford. Behind its 33-inch Goodyear Wrangler Territory RT tires and wide-flared fenders are Fox QS3 three-position manually adjustable dampers with rear external reservoirs, forged aluminum upper control arms, electronically lockable rear differential, multi-terrain and crawl-control drive modes, and an electronic anti-roll bar disconnect—an option on other models, standard on the TRD Pro. Other TRD Pro benefits include a 20-inch LED light bar, Rigid Industries LED two colorway fog lamps, an ARB steel rear bumper, and Toyota’s IsoDynamic front seats, which use their own pneumatic dampers to soak up trail bumps that make it past the Foxes. The TRD Pro comes with the Tacoma’s top powertrain option—the hybrid i-Force Max, which combines a turbocharged 2.4-liter four-cylinder with a 48-hp electric motor sandwiched between the engine block and the eight-speed transmission. Total output is 326 horsepower and 465 pound-feet of torque. Of course, with great power comes a great price tag: $65,395, which our TRD Pro bumped up to an as-tested $65,869 with options including a bed mat ($200), a ball mount ($70), and a tailgate insert ($99).

In Chevy’s corner stood the Colorado ZR2 Bison, which, if this were purely a competition of looking the part, would have rolled over the other trucks to the winning parking spot. The Bison looms over the Toyota and Ford on 35-inch Goodyear Wrangler Territory MTs under high-arched flared fenders. The wide tires required a new offset on their 17-inch wheels for a pronounced stance, like a steel bulldog. It has a soft heart, though—or at least a hydraulically jounce-controlled heart. Multimatic spool-valve dampers and hydraulic bump stops absorb changing terrain. The Bison has electronically lockable front and rear differentials, AEV beadlock-capable wheels, AEV bumpers front and rear, underbody skid plates in the front and protecting the fuel tank in the rear, and several off-road modes including a ZR2-only Baja mode. Its massive tires are too large to mount a spare beneath the truck, so the fifth sits in the bed, where it eats up cargo room but adds significantly to the Bison’s Mad Max appeal. There are no hybrid options for the Colorado—it’s propelled by the same powertrain as the regular ZR2, a turbocharged 310-hp 2.7-liter four-cylinder making 430 pound-feet of torque and paired with an eight-speed automatic. The base 2025 ZR2 crew cab price is $51,195, but Bisoning it up adds $11,700; our test truck also had the Technology package, which includes a Bose audio system and adaptive cruise control ($1450), and an optional sunroof ($1000), bringing the Colorado’s as-tested total to $63,845.

The baby Raptor is the newest option in the rough-and-ready mid-size truck market, and it’s far more than just a sticker on a regular Ranger. While its stance isn’t quite as trophy-truck as its F-150 namesake, the Ranger Raptor has a wider track than non-Raptor models and a beefed-up steering rack. Like Toyota, Ford went to Fox for the suspension, but instead of manually adjustable units, the Raptor gets electronically-controlled Fox Live-Valve dampers—so they adjust themselves to different ground surfaces. A 405-hp twin-turbo 3.0-liter V-6 engine making 430 pound-feet of torque mates to a 10-speed automatic, putting the Ford ahead in horsepower. Our 2024 Ranger Raptor had a starting price of $57,315 (rising to $57,415 for 2025), but our test truck added a $750 Raptor graphic on its rear fenders, a spray-in bedliner ($495), a keyless-entry keypad ($95), and mounted its 33-inch BFGoodrich All-Terrain T/A KO3 tires on the optional 17-inch beadlock-capable wheels ($1495) for a $60,150 final price. Whew, these mid-size haulers are hauling big prices, when $60K is our bargain of the week.

Interior and Exterior

We’ve already mentioned that the Colorado was the most eye-catching of the group, although less for its body design and more for its taller tires and rugged stance. The Ranger has a smoother shape, with rounded fender cladding and a chunky black grille that wraps around into the headlights. The Tacoma has more angles than curves, but there isn’t a wimpy design in the bunch. The general aesthetic is “Move off the trail or get the imprint of this logo in your headrests when we drive through your back window.” Nobody wants to explain why the back of their driver’s seat reads “DROF.” We pretty much had the trails to ourselves.

On the inside, the crew conditions in these extended cabs vary in space and comfort. The Tacoma earned praise for its wide, comfortable front seats and interior storage space—even though the hybrid’s battery means there’s no longer additional room under the rear seat. The console and door panels offered sturdy cup/bottle holders (a total of 14), nonslip phone surfaces, and side pockets large enough for off-road accoutrements like a radio or a pair of gloves. We especially liked that the door pockets were made with an open-grid design, making it easy to see what’s inside and to clean out sand and pebbles after a day in the dirt.

The Toyota’s controls are blessedly physical. While maps and music scroll across a 14.0-inch touchscreen, anything you might want to adjust while in motion can be done by feel. Volume, lights, drive mode, and off-road settings are all physical controls on the center stack or the console. Driver-assistance functions such as lane-keep assist (part of the standard Toyota Safety Sense 3.0 suite) need to be adjusted through the digital instrument cluster with the steering-wheel controls.

Where the Tacoma disappointed us was in the back seat—mostly because of its front seat. While the front chairs’ air-ride dampers are a cool idea, and do prevent some head toss for the driver, the space they take up on the back of the seats renders the rear of the cabin unusable for human occupancy. Any legroom in the back is eaten up by the IsoDynamic seats’ structure that contains the dampers and related hardware. Even worse, should someone gamely thread their shins in between the hard points, even on-road bumps will slam the passenger back and forth between various unforgiving surfaces. It’s miserable for two, unbearable for three, and you can’t get the TRD Pro trim without these chairs.

Rubbing our bruised knees, we hauled ourselves up into the Colorado. Chevy really could sacrifice a smidge of the Bison’s 12.2-inch ground clearance to offer a step on the angled rock sliders, because it’s a real scramble to get in there, but once ensconced, the ZR2 offers the best driver’s seat, firm but not rigid, with good adjustability for our drivers of varied heights. Chevy leans more on screens than does Toyota, and many of the Bison’s controls, including the headlights, are embedded in menus on the 11.3-inch touchscreen. This may not be an issue for most owners, but there are times on the trail when a driver might want to reach into a truck and turn on the lights without having to climb in and start it, so we dinged it for the inconvenience. At least the off-road controls are easily accessible, though, on a multiuse knob in the console.

The Bison doesn’t offer as many storage spots as the Tacoma, but crucially, it can store the most important cargo—back-seat passengers—in way more comfort. We gave the Colorado the highest rating for its crew quarters, where even three across felt livable.

The Raptor offers a 12.4-inch touchscreen that feels larger because of its vertical orientation. Controls are bit scattered—some in the screen, some on the console—but even if it isn’t the best organized, it’s easy to find the off-road modes and basic climate and infotainment settings. For storage, it has two gloveboxes, plus a warren of small slots and cubbies in the center console. Ford’s seats were the flashiest, a red-and-black combo that looked like someone had stolen the leathers from a MotoGP team and turned them into seat covers. They weren’t the most supportive front seats, with what felt like a hollow space in the center of the cushion, but the rear seat was far more spacious than the Toyota’s, if not quite as comfortable as in the Bison.

Performance

Today’s mid-size truck can do just about anything. Want to tow? The Ford can haul a max load of 5510 pounds, the Chevy 5500, and Tacoma 6000. That gives the top score to the TRD Pro, but any of the three could pull a boat or some ATVs for the weekend.

When it comes to their accomplishments as actual trucks, using the classic definition of a vehicle with a big empty space in back for hauling stuff, the Tacoma takes the lead with the highest payload (1680 pounds) and the most trick accessories, like a composite bed and a clever rail-and-cleat system that comes standard, as well as a small cubby to hold an the optional air compressor or a muddy strap. The Ranger won favor for making its bed wide enough to hold a sheet of plywood flat across the back, and the Bison hides a secret storage compartment in its tailgate, presumably for things you don’t mind rattling around behind you.

On the test track, they stack up pretty much by horsepower. The Ranger Raptor crosses the quarter-mile mark well ahead of the others, in 14.1 seconds at 97 mph. The TRD Pro just nudges past the Bison with a 15.3-second run at 89 mph, to the Chevy’s 15.6 seconds at 87 mph. At first this surprised us because on the road the Bison felt positively sluggish compared to the other two, making whoever was behind the wheel work twice as hard to carve through the freeway traffic on our way out to Borrego Springs. Looking at our 50-to-70-mph passing numbers helped put it in perspective. The Chevy isn’t slow off the line—in fact it hits 30 mph 0.1 second before the Toyota, but it’s laggy once it’s moving, taking 5.5 seconds to go from 50 mph to 70 mph, whereas the Tacoma gets there in 4.7 seconds, and the zippy Ford knocks that one out in just 3.9.

The three trucks were close together on the skidpad, with the Ranger pulling 0.71 g, the Colorado 0.72 g, and the Tacoma 0.74 g. The Ranger really fell short, or rather, long, in braking, where it took 205 feet to stop from 70 mph versus 196 feet for the Tacoma, while the Colorado on its big 35-inch tires only needed 187 feet. Really, all these numbers are impressive when you realize they aren’t coming from sedans or even sporty SUVs, but from 5000-plus-pound pickups on tires more suited to dirt trails than drag strips.

Driving Experience

Test track numbers don’t always translate to on-road feel, and even less often to off-road feel, where stability and consistency can often make a vehicle feel better and push harder than outright horsepower. In the case of our truck trio, however, the Ranger Raptor’s dominating test numbers absolutely represent our experiences with it on the highway and out in the sand washes. We found it responsive and almost shockingly easy to lay down the power over everything from whoops to deep sand with none of the juddering or violence of the other two trucks. “I knew the Raptor would be a rocket ship,” said managing testing editor David Beard. With a sprint to 60 mph in just 5.3 seconds, it indeed is. “I like that is has an attitude. It wants to be driven hard. It really feels like a Baja truck.” Technical editor Dan Edmunds agreed, saying, “The Raptor did everything right.” It was the fought-over truck for our on-pavement transits between trails and an absolute delight when the pavement ended. It’s also the easiest truck to off-road. While you can play with settings to lock or unlock the electronic rear diff in different modes or adjust stability control depending on your level of comfort with off-roading tech, you can also choose from one of Raptor’s preset all-terrain modes—Off-Road, Baja, or Rock Crawl—and trust the truck to choose 4Auto, 4H, or 4L and turn off traction assistance at the appropriate times. It does a pretty good job, although Baja mode, which was the best suited to the fast, sandy washes and small dunes we were playing in, held the gears longer than any of us wanted to hear the V-6 near the redline. As Beard said after the first day, “The shift paddles are perfectly placed and have a great feel to them, which is good, because in Baja mode you really need to manually shift.”

Neither of the other two trucks offers steering-wheel paddles—you can manually shift using buttons on the console shifter or the shifter itself—but they also had much calmer transmission tunes. The Raptor wasn’t perfect though. Beard described its low-speed steering effort as “a steering rack full of molasses” and bemoaned its lack of ventilated seats, but there was no doubt it was the crowd favorite.

The TRD Pro surprised us all, and not in a good way, when our initial run found it so stiff in the front it was catching air over the whoops—something only photographer James Lipman was pleased about. After a bit of fumbling, we realized it was set at full stiffness in the front and full soft in the rear. Bringing it back to middle settings all around helped, but even in its softest settings it couldn’t compete with the Ford over washboards or dips. Over long rough passages it beat the driver up enough that you could hear it in their voice over the radio like someone was drumming on their backbone. “HooOOooOOoldDd UUuup, GuuuUUUuuuys.” The dampers were a good lesson in checking your equipment, because anything that can be manually adjusted can be manually adjusted wrong.

The Tacoma is the most hands-on of the trucks that way. A first-timer would need to know what damper settings worked best in different landscapes, be willing to get out and lie in the dirt to change them, and make their own decisions about when to be in four-wheel low. Whether that’s a pro or a con depends on your level of off-road experience. It would be great if putting the Tacoma in one of its off-road modes like Sand or Rock automatically disabled certain Safety Sense features, because realizing that the truck won’t go in reverse because of a shadow or a bush while sinking into a dune is a terrible time to have to go through the menu in search of the setting to switch that off.

On the road the Colorado was trailing behind, but once we started kicking up some dust, its smaller wheels and bigger tires with tall sidewalls cushioned bumps that chattered teeth in the Tacoma. Its off-road menus were easy to adjust even while in motion, and its extra ground clearance was confidence inspiring while weaving around, and occasionally over, half-buried boulders. Edmunds called it “well damped and smooth,” although we all noted that the rear end had a tendency to dance around over high-speed washboards, where the Ranger stayed planted, and the much-touted hydraulic bump stops were audible on every landing. Like the Ranger, the Chevy has several preset modes to help newbies find the right settings and make it quick and easy for experts, too.

And the Winner Is . . .

There was a time when owning a capable off-road truck was like owning a boat or a grand piano: ideal for its specialized use but the rest of the time just something that takes up space and offers a surface to pile junk on. Only the most dedicated of wheelers would have used their locker-equipped, knobby-tired, desert build for commuting, because the trade-off in ride comfort, fuel economy, and on-road handling would shatter vertebrae, empty wallets, and require 12-point turns in parking garages. That’s not the case today. The Chevy Colorado ZR2 Bison, Toyota Tacoma TRD Pro, and Ford Ranger Raptor were all ridiculously fun in the dirt and totally civilized on the street. They do all the basic truck jobs and have looks that impress at a trailhead. So, no losers, but we had an obvious winner in the Ranger Raptor. Not only did it offer all kinds of off-road goodies with a lower asking price than the others, it also delivered a better ride off-road with little sacrifice on-road.

Like an F1 race in 2023, the real battle here was for second place. It was clear to us pretty quickly that the Ford would claim first, but second could have gone either way between the Chevy and the Toyota. We liked the Bison’s looks and ride comfort more. We definitely liked its rear seat more, but the Tacoma has a more usable, better-equipped bed, and its hybrid powertrain means its EPA estimated fuel economy at 23/22/24 mpg (combined, city, highway) was far better than the others, which were mired in the teens. During our heavy-throttle 500-mile adventure, we didn’t hit EPA numbers for any of the trucks, but the Toyota managed a 16-mpg average, while the Ford and Chevy only got 14 mpg.

In the end, the math worked in favor of economy and practicality, and just like in the drag race, the Tacoma TRD Pro slipped by the Colorado at the finish line. Of course, if you disagree, we’d be happy to discuss it over margaritas at the swim-up bar of your choice.

Source: Reviews - aranddriver.com