Toyota knows its trucks are popular with the overlanding set. The new Tacoma Trailhunter is designed specifically for that crowd, upfit from the factory and ready for your tent of choice. It has all sorts of nice touches like extra LED lighting, MOLLE panels on the sides of the sport bar, and our favorite feature, an on-board air compressor.
Airing down tires is a great way to improve traction on rocks and sand alike, but you also need to air them back up before you get back on pavement. A lot of off-roaders carry a separate tire-pressure gauge and a compressor for this purpose, and while that’s fine, it’s also two more things you need to buy and make space for. The Trailhunter’s integrated compressor is a more elegant solution.
Under a flip-up panel on the left side of the bed, you’ve got buttons to set target tire pressure or to call up user-defined presets, all of which are shown on a small display screen. Next to that is a connector for the hose. Behind a panel on the opposite side of the bed, Toyoyta includes a coiled hose that reaches all four tires of the truck, though you can use an air hose with standard fittings. The compressor itself is hidden away.
You can connect the hose both to let air out of the tires, and to refill them later. It works quickly, too, though the truck has to be powered on. While the on-board compressor is standard on the Trailhunter, it’s available as an aftermarket accessory for other Tacoma models. We think it’s brilliant.
